Twelve-year-old, Zaleena Boyer, who died on Wednesday at the Mabaruma Hospital after being stung by a scorpion while on her way to school, was also diagnosed with pneumonia.
This is according to the family of the young girl, during an interview with the Sunday Stabroek.
In the interview, the girl’s aunt disclosed that during the lab test, it was discovered that apart from the scorpion sting, her niece was suffering from pneumonia.
“What they told us when the lab returned. They said it’s the scorpion sting [and] pneumonia. That is when they do all the tests, they say”.
The aunt pointed out that this came as a surprise since all her niece had was a common cold about a week ago.
“She had a little cough from last week Friday to Saturday, I believe around that time. Last Friday, her nose was stuffed up and she was coughing… we didn’t take her to the doctor because it was just a cold.”
While this may have been the cause, she acknowledged that a full understanding of how the girl died would come out in the post-mortem report.
Boyer, who hailed from the remote community of Wauna in the Mabaruma sub-region, felt a pain in her foot after putting on her shoes to head to school on Tuesday. She told a relative who later took her to the health centre and she was later transferred to the Mabaruma hospital, where she died.
Since the incident, there has been some speculation concerning the manner in which the young girl was treated at the hospital which may have contributed to her demise. Health officials have denied that this could be the case.
The aunt, who was with young Boyer during her final moments noted that the hospital staff tried their best and was unaware of any sort of mistreatment.
“Well, I don’t know about that if she didn’t get the right treatment, but the nurses paying attention to her, yes. They gave her medication, and they told us this was antibiotic … What I notice is that with every medication they give her, she continued to vomit it out. So, to me, nothing was not staying down to fight against the illness, because they all try, they all try hard to help her because they paid attention but the vomiting continued after she started to feel bad after the blood test, and from there she started to vomit which continued right through”, she said.
The woman iterated that she didn’t know what had happened but stressed that the hospital staff tried everything.
“I don’t know what happened because they tried everything and still she didn’t make it.”
A full probe into the matter is underway and a post-mortem report is expected soon.
