A five-month-old baby, who was stricken with bronchopneumonia, died at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) on Sunday after she was apparently misdiagnosed with chikungunya.
The baby, Eimi Patterson, fell sick three weeks ago and she was taken to the hospital for treatment only to be diagnosed with chikungunya, according to her 25-year-old mother Cindy Best.
Stabroek News made several attempts yesterday to contact the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the hospital Michael Khan but was unsuccessful in reaching him for a comment on the case.
Best told Stabroek News that her daughter started coughing nonstop. She said it was so loud she could have heard a gurgling sound in the baby’s stomach.
“My baby wasn’t eating and she was losing weight, so I get scared and I carry her to the hospital and they tell me she showing early signs of chikungunya. Then, the doctor gave me a Panadol syrup and a pack of salts and sent us home,” Best recounted.
However, a few days later things took a bad turn and Best was forced to carry the child back to a hospital after the baby was experiencing laboured breathing.
She said she took the child to the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and a doctor there told her that the child had bronchopneumonia and needed to be stabilised.
Best said she subsequently took the child back to the GPH and asked the doctor who treated her on the first occasion why she said the child had chikungunya instead of testing for bronchopneumonia. She said she waited an entire day at the hospital before the doctor gave her an explanation. “But what she tell me wasn’t no proper answer. She didn’t tell me why they didn’t know that that was what was wrong with my baby.
All she asking me is why I didn’t tell her the baby had that,” the woman added.
Best stated that her daughter’s condition worsened and finally she was placed on life support in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. “She died eleven days after. But now they don’t wanna release my child’s body. They carrying me round and round,” she said.
She added that she visited the Chief Medical Officer Shamdeo Persaud’s office earlier this week to ask that he release the child’s body but was sent away by a staffer who instructed her that he was in a meeting.
“They misdiagnose my daughter and gave me no explanation for it and now they are holding her body. I have the funeral plan and everything. Now I need my daughter,” she said.
Best was especially critical about the apparent oversight, saying doctors are not supposed to make such errors. “…Not a mistake like this. When you are a doctor, the few mistakes you make the better and this was a big mistake! They just can’t bring unqualified and untrained doctors from Cuba and put them on the floor to work. They have no training…they are careless!” she said. “If they had found what was really wrong from the inception they could have saved my baby’s life but they went ahead hurry, hurry and do their own thing,” she added.
