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Distraught mother cites negligence in toddler’s death
By Edison Jefford and Latoya Giles
An obviously distraught young mother is struggling to come to grips with the loss of her first and only
Dead: Two-year-old Safia Daniels
child, two-year-old Safia Daniels, who succumbed under mysterious circumstances Monday night at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
The child’s mother, Shellon Gordon, who is a nurse, said that her daughter spent over 24 hours at the hospital from last Saturday, without medical attention. Gordon was adamant that her daughter died because of doctors’ negligence.
“Friday night around 8pm the right side of her face swelled and I rushed her to the hospital.
Safia was examined and an x-ray and blood tests were ordered. The doctor, who saw her, called for a Dr. Khan, the paediatrician, but Dr. Khan never came until around 3am Saturday morning,” Gordon said.
“When she (the paediatrician) came, she ordered a pint of blood and told us to take her up to the ward and they would come and look at her. Nobody came that Saturday after then, until Sunday doctors came and looked at her. She was not eating anything,” the mother continued.
According to Gordon, she had to ask the doctors about saline and oxygen for her daughter as she felt those were necessary on Sunday because of the child’s inability to eat and because she had stopped breathing through her nostrils. She was breathing via the mouth.
“I watched the tip of her fingers and toes turn blue.
Her stomach got hard and I screamed and got up to get the nurses because there was nobody attending to her. Doctors came after and they were confused, asking each other what to do and so on,” Gordon said.
The child was a patient at the Paediatric Non-Infection Children’s Ward. Gordon recalled seeing her daughter’s urine and tears turn yellow as her hands grew cold.
She said the doctors instructed nurses to just cover up the child, they then told her that everything will be fine.
“They haven’t given us any proper explanation as to what really happened to Safia. They just let her punish at the hospital.
“Half of her body had gone cold on Monday. She just went from bad to worse and none of the doctors could help her,” the grieving mother lamented.
Safia succumbed around 10am Monday night, and the post mortem, which was performed at the same institution yesterday, cited pneumonia as the cause of death.
Gordon said that based on her experience treating pneumonia, her daughter had no such symptoms.
In addition, Gordon questioned if it was indeed a case of pneumonia, why doctors were unable to detect the symptoms and thereby give an accurate diagnosis.
She said that if indeed her daughter died from pneumonia, she was being treated incorrectly from the inception.
She recalled Safia waking up last Sunday with a swelling and she immediately rushed her to the Accident and Emergency Unit at GPHC. Gordon said that a Dr. Persaud indicated that it may be an abscess, but later checks revealed that was not the case.
“She had a physical examination where her lungs and so on were checked.
They gave us Panadol Syrup and sent us away. She was fine from then to about (last) Wednesday when she got a runny nose and started crying for pains.
I had her on the medication since it was a seven-day treatment, but when her face swelled on Friday, I rushed her back to the hospital,” Gordon stated. The child never left the hospital alive.
Public Relations Officer at GPHC, Alero Proctor, yesterday told Kaieteur News that the matter was being investigated.
Proctor stated that the post mortem examination was done, but the report has not been completed.
She promised that once all the information is put together the hospital will issue a thorough statement on the matter.
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