Mother accuses GPHC nurses of causing son’s blindness

Nov 09, 2008 News

A distraught and irate mother is accusing nurses at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) of causing her son to become blind in the left eye after he used several eye drops they gave to him over time.

Sahodrie Ramgolan hugs her son, Ravindra Lall, who displays the medication he received at the GPHC.

During an interview yesterday, Sahodrie Ramgolan, of 18 Croal Street, Enterprise, East Coast Demerara, said that in late July dust from a wooden plank fell into her son’s left eye as he was performing carpentry duties on a building in the village.

She said that when her son arrived home, at around 18:00 hrs on the day of the incident and related the incident to her, she directed him to wash his eyes repeatedly with water.

She said that about two days later he complained of ‘a sticking sensation’ in the eye, and she took him to the GPHC, where a nurse examined the eye and sent him to the pharmacy to collect a bottle of Tobramycin Ophthalmic Solution U.S.P, eye drops which he used for four days before it was finished.

Her son, 19-year-old Ravindra Lall, indicated that, on his second visit to the hospital, he was given a bottle of Tobramycin and Dexamethasone Ophthalmic Solution which he used immediately.

The young man said this eye drop, however, began ‘burning and scratching his eyes immediately’. This eye drop was given a week after the first one.

Ravindra said he used the eye-drops twice after and was shocked on the fourth day when he began ‘seeing cloudy’ in the left eye.

Three days later, Ravindra was completely blind in the left eye.
The mother told Kaieteur News that, on August 18, a vision test taken at the institution revealed that Ravindra was indeed completely blind as she had suspected. The woman provided the results of the vision test. The woman said that two weeks ago her son visited the Diamond Hospital with hopes of receiving help, but was referred to the GPHC by staff there.

The mother and son visited the city hospital on Monday last and were told to return on the Tuesday to see a doctor, a request with which they complied. Sahodrie said that her son was examined by a Chinese doctor and was given Ciplox 500 and Prednisolone BP5 tablets. The young man used one of the Ciplox 500 tablets and four of the other.

On Friday last, the woman visited the GPHC with her son and said she was relating her son’s predicament to other patients when a passing nurse, on overhearing the conversation, shouted rudely at her, “Hey, you woman, why you telling people we blind yuh son?”

She said that the nurse took her into a room where there were eleven other nurses and she was ordered to relate her story all over again.

The woman said the nurse who took her to the room kept insisting that her son was blind on his first visit to the hospital, to which she (the mother) vehemently protested.

According to the very emotional mother, she was later allowed to return to her seat only to have the same nurse return shouting, “Hey, lady, move from deh; we ain’t want you entertaining de crowd.”

The woman said she was ordered to sit a distance away from the persons with whom she had resumed her conversation, and was allowed to take her son to a doctor some time later.

She said the doctor spoke briefly with her son and examined an x-ray he had received from the institution during his second visit. She said that when they exited the doctor’s office, they were told to wait outside for the doctor, who came out about ten minutes after and told her there was ‘nothing he could do for her son’.

She is adamantly proclaiming that her son had his sight in the left eye when he visited the hospital, and was blinded by the medication given to him by nurses at the GPHC.

Coming out of the visits to the hospital, the young man was given a total of four bottles of Ocutim 0.5% eye drop, two bottles of Bexamethasone SodiumPhosphate Ophthalmic Solution U.S.P (Dexacip Eye Drops) and one bottle of Ophthalmic Solution U.S.P (Timanol 0.5%).