A tod­dler dy­ing as a re­sult of a scor­pi­on sting at hos­pi­tal is trag­ic. I can on­ly imag­ine the trau­ma as those par­ents had to wait, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, an eter­ni­ty of 15 min­utes fill­ing out forms while their child was bare­ly hang­ing on. And why was there no an­ti­dote? Some­one should be held ac­count­able. Then on Jan­u­ary 10, a 31-year-old moth­er was tak­en to the Princes Town hos­pi­tal com­plain­ing of se­vere pan in her low­er ab­domen. The doc­tor on du­ty ex­am­ined her and pre­scribed pain killers. She was dis­charged and tak­en home.

How­ev­er, two days af­ter she re­turned to the hos­pi­tal with the same com­plaint-on­ly worse. This time she was sent to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she died the fol­low­ing day. The cause of death was a rup­tured ap­pen­dici­tis. In this age no one de­serves to die from ap­pen­dici­tis. Four chil­dren, rang­ing from two to nine years, are now moth­er­less. Again some­one should be an­swer­able. Some­thing tan­gi­ble must be done to help this poor fam­i­ly.

Vish­nu Dass

Princes Town