By Mia Anthony
Five-year-old Jai-Devi Gurdyal passed away at the Georgetown Public Hospital on Friday after suffering an asthma attack and relatives say they were told she had been overdosed on antibiotics at the West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH) earlier that morning.
The Sunday Stabroek reached out yesterday to the WDRH for a comment on the claim but was unable to obtain any information on what may have caused Jai-Devi’s death. The Sunday Stabroek understands that the Medical Council of Guyana will be contacted on the matter.
The child was first admitted to the WRDH (Best Hospital) for treatment, and eventually transferred to Georgetown.
The child’s mother, Umawattie Gonace, yesterday told the Sunday Stabroek that she noticed that on Wednesday, Jai-Devi had come down with a slight cold. By Thursday, the cold progressed into a full fever.
However, the child was still behaving normally despite the discomfort and went about finishing her school work since she did not attend school on Wednesday. By Thursday evening, the fever was still present, and she started wheezing a bit. This prompted her mother to give her the inhaler to use after she noticed an increase in the wheezing and coughing.
On Friday morning around 1 am, Gonace checked on her daughter and observed that she was not breathing well. It was then that she and her husband, Anil Gurdyal decided to take their child to the West Demerara Regional Hospital for further treatment.
Detailing her experience at the hospital, Umawattie recalled that the doctor on duty that morning had examined their daughter and noted that she was indeed short of breath.
“We took her to the hospital, they wrote up her chart, took her temperature”, the mother said. After this, the doctor on duty instructed that a dose of oxygen be given to the child, which was done for about half an hour After this, Jai-Devi went back to being relatively normal for a few minutes, interacting with her dad and other loved ones.
The parents were then summoned by the doctor who told them the child would need another dose of oxygen. Gonace agreed because usually her child receives two doses of oxygen.
The doctor subsequently told the child to open her mouth so that he can check her throat. “He told her to open her mouth to check her throat, she didn’t open big.” They were then instructed by the doctor to restrain her so that he would be better able to check her throat properly. “He said she had a tonsil, then he started to write up to give her medication”, the mother said.
“He said she would have to get saline,” Gonace recalled, and after saying this, the doctor proceeded to draw blood from the child. “One of the nurses asked if she would be taking that blood sample to the lab, he told her no and that if anything happens and she needs to get admitted to the hospital then the blood would be taken to the lab.” As the medical staff began administering the saline, they also brought a syringe containing a yellowish antibiotic and gave it to the child along with a second dose of oxygen.
However, moments after receiving the treatment, Jai-Devi began to vomit uncontrollably. The doctor then instructed the attending medical professional to give her another dose of antibiotic. “This antibiotic was clear; they didn’t put anything to get the colour.”
Jai-Devi fell asleep for all of 10 minutes, after which she woke up, pulling off her oxygen mask. “She pulled it down, and I pulled it back up. She pulled it off again. I noticed my child’s face looked a bit different, she was panting for breath, trying hard to speak.”
Gonace then asked the doctor to come and look at her child. They placed Jai-Devi on a bed and she called her husband to return to the hospital since he had left to go home to check on their two other children.
Yelled
She said that while speaking to him, she was yelled at by a nurse on duty. “One of the nurses started yelling at me, saying to come off the phone.”
After she complied with the order, she returned to her child’s bedside, rubbing her head and giving her encouragement to push through. She related that while sitting down she started to cry and choked up a bit. This prompted a nurse to tell her in a rude tone that there was a sink if she wanted to vomit. “She said ‘get up’ and I got up, she said ‘walk go to the end, you’ll see a sink there.’ I said ‘yes, I know where the sink is,’ she said ‘okay if you feel to vomit you must walk and go there.’”
By this time the decision was taken to transfer Jai-Devi to the Georgetown Public Hospital for further medical treatment.
Jai-Devi’s dad accompanied her in the ambulance to the Georgetown Public Hospital while Gonace returned home to grab a few things before heading over.
Around 8 am on Friday, Anil and Jai-Devi arrived with the ambulance at the GPH. Gonace recalled that while at the hospital, the doctors attempted to resuscitate Jai-Devi since they were unable to find a heartbeat. After the attempts proved successful, they started to gather up oxygen equipment. The doctor quickly realized that the canister of oxygen was empty. “They had to go get another set of oxygen.”
The mother then related to the doctor what had transpired at the West Demerara Hospital. After which, another doctor on duty told the family that Jai-Devi had a below 50 per cent chance of survival, and explained that the child’s organs were shutting down.
“He said her heart shut down two times, the lungs are tight and the next time they came they said her brain had stopped functioning. They said they will do a CT scan to see if she has bleeding.”
The doctor also told the family that Jai Devi’s eyesight had deteriorated and one eye was bigger than the other.
According to Gonace, the doctors at the GPH told her that her child was overdosed on antibiotics at the West Demerara Hospital. “She was supposed to be given three doses of antibiotics; they ended up giving her six within half an hour.”
The grieving mother, recalling her daughter’s last moments, said that they had asked countless times to be let into the ICU to be by their child’s side, but unfortunately, she passed before they were allowed to enter. It was only after that she was allowed in along with her husband.
Jai-Devi was a student at the Cornelia Ida Primary School.
