Death of a ten year old in Guyana

Apr 03, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As recent as last week, this newspaper carried a letter in which I was advised not to write so negatively about life in Guyana. I wrote a column in response documenting unchanging existence in this land and that existence I have witnessed my entire life. I have seen unacceptable things happen in this country that even in war torn lands the government and its citizens would not accept. And this state of affairs goes on.
I am not a medical doctor. But I, like billions of people in this world, know that certain injuries in the 21st century people do not die from and should not die from. You do not have to be a doctor to know that. This newspaper reported that a ten-year-old school girl took ill in her home with complaints of pain in her stomach. She told her parents that another kid kicked her in the stomach. The mother said they took her to the Georgetown Public Hospital where she underwent tests and an ultra sound. The mother went on to explain that her daughter’s condition did not improve and they subsequently discovered she had died in bed.
Did she die from medical incompetence? I don’t have the answer but I can ask the question. My feeling leads me to think that the ultrasound and the test may not have shown that she was bleeding internally. I want to believe that she was in fact bleeding internally from the day she got the kick.
Here is my question – in the 21st century with modern technology in medicine, should one die from a kick to the stomach? I want to believe that you should not die from a blow to the stomach because modern medical techniques can and should save your life. I will follow the post-mortem in this situation.
I am cautious about attributing incompetence to the doctors at Georgetown Public Hospital because the last time I wrote about that (a few months ago) with specific reference to many Cuban trained doctors, there was letter after letter from some of these very doctors denouncing me.
I did not read one, even one letter, that testified to the incompetence of some of these Cuban trained personnel, except my editor-in chief, Adam Harris who in his column looked at a particular area of surgery that he said may not be infused with competence. But I wasn’t surprised. This has been the nature of Guyana; people are self-destructive.
I have heard story after story after story about the incompetence of Cuban-trained doctors. I have heard for decades now, the following exclamations from countless Guyanese on countless occasions; “Not me, I don’t want them Cuban-trained doctors to look at me.” This attitude is pronounced even among my friends.
Yet when I questioned the mediocre outcome of the training of several Cuban graduated Guyanese doctors, not one of our “famous human rights” crusaders said even a word about the doubts they have.
So a little ten-year-old is dead and circumstances point to the cause being the blow to the stomach. We come now to the part that makes this country so asinine a nation and so sickening a society. The angle we will now read about is the impact of violence within the schools. There will be letter after letter in the newspapers in which so-called concerned individuals will pontificate on the need to curb violence in schools. The Ministry of Education will get into the act and tell us they are working on a blueprint.
The death of this school girl will not give rise to the courage of at least one honest person to ask (not to accuse) if this little girl could have been saved at the Georgetown Public Hospital. No one will have the decency to say let us investigate if medical incompetence or medical neglect was the real cause. We do not have such humane people living in this territory anymore.
I have been a columnist since 1988, and one of the subjects that has frequently appeared over those three decades is the unnecessary loss of lives at the Georgetown Hospital.
Some of the memories I have of those deaths are very painful. My Chinese neighbour in Wortmanville was robbed and shot. He waited on a bench at the Georgetown Public Hospital for hours while he bled internally. He died on that bench before he saw a doctor. This is how cheap life has become in this country. Now with Trump in power, the rush to leave this hell hole will not be easy because American visas will be hard to come by. Suicides may increase.

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Death of a ten year old in Guyana

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