‘Why did my baby die?’

Between midnight and 3:00 each morning, Natasia Barrett-Boswell is yanked from her bed by a desperate need to comfort her two-year-old son, Xander. The only problem is, Xander has been dead for two weeks now.

Still, she can hear him crying.

Still, the images flood her mind of his weakened body as she begged doctors at the Baywest Medical and the Cornwall Regional hospitals in western Jamaica to see him.

And, in the wee hours of the morning, she bawls, her husband Lucien clutching her close.

It remains unclear if and where in the chain of events between 6 p.m. October 18 and 3 a.m. on October 19 that the health system failed the boy who died at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH). Internal investigations and a postmortem on Tuesday should shed some light there, the parents hope.

Preliminary reports suggest that the boy, who was taken to the hospitals for vomiting, was a victim of an outbreak of gastroenteritis, which that same week sent 112 children to the Bustamante Hospital for Children in St Andrew within four days.

Last week, attempts to get updates on the issue from Baywest and Cornwall Regional Hospital, which are both based in Montego Bay, St James, proved difficult.

In the meantime, Xander’s parents, who are from Coral Spring in Trelawny, have doubted gastroenteritis reports and detailed a swirl of confusion at both the private and public hospitals as they sought care for their baby.

“When we turned up to Baywest about 6 p.m., and because we ticked on the registration form that he had a fever the week before, they told us we had to do a COVID-19 test,” Xander’s father, Lucien Boswell, explained to The Sunday Gleaner. “We told them we didn’t have an issue, but we just wanted a doctor to look at him now.”

SENT TO AMBULANCE BAY

“That is why they sent us to the ambulance bay. They said, if we went there, they would look at him, and that if they have to do the COVID test after, they would do it,” he continued, adding that they waited for almost an hour.

“The doctor finally came and took his weight. Before she even checked him, it is the same thing she said, that he had to do a COVID test before. It is either that or they refer him to Cornwall Hospital,” he said fuming.

“That is when I became upset and said I might as well take him to Cornwall, because I had been waiting there for an hour only to be told the same thing,” he related, noting that neither he nor Xander’s frantic mother was told the type of COVID test to be done, how long it would take, and where in the hospital to do it.

Nonetheless, staff there prepared a referral to CRH’s paediatric unit.

At that public hospital, things took a further turn for the worse, said the mother.

Even with a referral, the parents said they were sent to register at the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department while their baby was deteriorating in their arms. At about 9 p.m., Natasia said her baby was finally seen by a doctor, who recommended rehydration salts for him.

Their instructions were to feed the baby the salts and report back to A&E within half an hour.

When they did, however, they were met only by a security guard. No hospital staff was present.

Natasia said she was informed that there was a shift change and that she should wait on the next available practitioner.

“We took him and we went in front of the security post and we stood there for about two or three hours, and, at this point, the baby was getting worse. At one point, I couldn’t even hold him. He was so restless and he was just so confused,” she recalled, holding back tears.

“It was about after 1 a.m. that we saw a doctor ... probably about two or three patients later, when my husband took the baby and went directly in front of her and said, ‘Doctor, look, the baby’s hands are pale. The baby is breathing and behaving funny’. Then, after some time, she called Xander’s name,” Natasia recounted.

She said they were soon informed that Xander had stopped breathing and that hospital staff were trying to resuscitate him. Some time later, the doctor took them into a room and told them that they were unable to restart Xander’s heart.

‘IT SHOULDN’T TAKE THREE HOURS’

Last week, the acting senior medical officer at CRH, Dr Garfield Badal, directed Sunday Gleaner queries to hospital CEO Charmaine Williams-Beckford.

After answering an initial call from The Sunday Gleaner, Williams-Beckford said she was in a meeting and would call back. She never did, neither did she answer numerous calls later placed to her cellphone.

Badal, in the meantime, explained that it is impractical for a shift change of doctors to last for three hours. He said, however, he is yet to see the final report on the incident.

“Generally, a handover is done at the end of each shift, where a round is held and the doctors coming on would interact with the doctors leaving and all outstanding items would be discussed and itemised in a priority manner so that the patients can be handled as soon as the shift coming on settles into the role,” he said, noting that the roster is handled by an emergency room physician.

“It depends on what kinds of patients we have, it depends on the gravity of what is in the emergency room. Sometimes it is a short handover and at other times it can be a little lengthy – up to an hour,” he said. “It shouldn’t take three hours, but if a patient waits for three hours, that patient may not be the first to be seen. If you attend any emergency room, and certainly in Cornwall, you are going to see maybe 50 people ahead of you.”

“Triaging then either bumps you ahead of that 50 or place you somewhere in the middle, depending on how significant your symptoms may be,” he said, directing further queries to the CEO.

“As concerned as I am, I have to be cautious at the same time. I stick to the medical facts,” Badal told The Sunday Gleaner.

Cornwall Regional has discontinued widespread testing of patients for COVID-19. However, staff at Baywest said they offer both rapid and PCR COVID-19 tests at the hospital.

corey.robinson@gleanerjm.com