Bronchitis cause of daycare death – PM report

A post-mortem examination performed on the body of four-month-old Phillip Pratt has revealed that he died of complications from bronchitis.

The infant died suddenly at the Mother’s Union Day Care on Robb Street on Tuesday after he was dropped off by his mother early that morning. According to reports, care workers at the day care centre had stated that the child was having trouble breathing and froth was running out of his nostrils and mouth.

“The daycare is not responsible for it and that’s the end of it,” his mother Philion Archer said when contacted yesterday. The post-mortem examination was performed yesterday morning at the Georgetown Public Hospital by government pathologist Dr Nehaul Singh.

Phillip Pratt
Phillip Pratt

Archer had previously stated that she dropped her son off around 8 am and left for work at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. She said she received a call from the head of the centre two hours later instructing her to go back there because Phillip was having trouble breathing. She said she rushed there in a taxi and saw her son frothing food at his mouth and nose. “He wasn’t breathing and that’s how I know he was dead,” she said, adding that before that her son was a healthy baby and was not sick. When Stabroek News arrived at the day care on Tuesday staff were very hostile and refused to speak, closing the doors and ordering the reporter off the property while yelling that it was a private property. Debbie, another relative of Phillip, said that when she visited the building she and other reporters were chased out of the building. “They were very hostile…telling us to get out! Get out! That’s not the way they should treat people,” she said.