The son of Farida De Souza who died at the Georgetown Public Hospital last month after sustaining three heart attacks during a 12-hour wait, said he is frustrated at the foot-dragging at the hospital while noting that all he wants is a full investigation into the care his mother received.
Contacted yesterday Raul De Souza said that almost two weeks after lodging a complaint with the hospital he is yet to be taken to identify the accident and emergency room nurses who were on duty while his mother was there.
The upset man told Stabroek News that he was advised by Public Relations Officer Mitzy Campbell that the staff in question is on the night shift for one month and as such he would have to visit during the night time hours to point them out.
He said they agreed that this would be done last week Thursday night. De Souza said Campbell advised him that she would call him when she was ready. He said he waited and waited but received no call. He said he was unable to call her because phone numbers including hers had been wiped from his phone.
He then took a decision to get in touch with Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran, but was not spoken to in a polite manner, he said. De Souza said the minister told him he has nothing to say about the matter and he [De Souza] had to deal with the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Khan.
“Right now I am upset at things. All I want is an investigation as to why she had to be waiting over nine hours for medical care and why the blood tests results had to take so long,” he stressed adding that he cannot understand what the difficulty is with conducting an investigation.
He said the hospital can go ahead without him because it would have a record of who was on duty on the night in question.
He said the records would also show who did the blood tests and who the doctor on duty was.
De Souza insisted that he would not allow the hospital to frustrate him into giving up. He said he plans to visit the hospital tomorrow and if the response is not favourable, then he will take what action he deems appropriate. “Is gon be three weeks next Wednesday and nobody ain’t saying nothing,” he said.
The 56-year-old mother of four was rushed to the Georgetown Hospital by De Souza and his wife after she collapsed at her Albouystown home on May 13 around 11.30 am. The woman was never really attended to until around 2.30 pm when she was given saline and some blood taken for tests to be conducted.
After all of the saline was administered—this would have been some time after 5 pm that day—she was told to go into the waiting area of the emergency room and wait for her test results.
De Souza had told this newspaper that his mother was very uncomfortable sitting on the bench and his attempts to get a bed for her to lie down were futile.
Around 10.30 pm she started complaining about chest pains and he alerted the nurses on duty but was told they have to wait on the results after which the doctor would assess the situation. Her test results were finally ready at 2.30 am on May 14 and after reviewing them the doctor indicated that she should do a chest x ray since he did not like what he saw.
The woman was made to walk to the x ray department without a nurse or a wheelchair.
She collapsed just outside the department and had to be rushed into the emergency room on a stretcher. At that point she was in a semi-conscious state. It was while in the emergency room that the woman suffered three heart attacks. Two small ones followed by a massive one which destroyed 90% of her heart.
She was later admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and placed on life support. She died the following morning.
De Souza has accused of staff of negligence explaining that had they acted on his mother’s complaints and had they moved with some speed in the treatment given to her, she may have been alive today.
