Malis­sa Lara-Pat­ter­son

Ba­by Eli­jah Cross took his last breath on Fri­day night, hours af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery.The three-month-old lost the fight to an ill­ness still un­known, at 8.30 pm at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC).His con­fused and trau­ma­tised par­ents, Christo­pher Cross, 25, and Celi­na Lawrence, 27, spoke to Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day and sim­ply asked: "Why did our child die?"They claim doc­tors at first thought the ba­by had a bow­el prob­lem, then, maybe pneu­mo­nia, then they felt he had H1N1 (swine flu).

The in­fant was cough­ing and snif­fling but did not have a fever last Wednes­day.On Thurs­day, when tak­en to EWM­SC there was no de­lay in run­ning tests-which showed up no ab­nor­mal­i­ties.Eli­jah was still scream­ing around that time with pain but noth­ing that doc­tors pro­vid­ed helped.Though one of the ju­nior doc­tors sug­gest­ed it might be col­ic, no one took heed and they con­tin­ued treat­ing it as a bow­el com­plaint.Try­ing to flush out any im­pu­ri­ties, doc­tors tried dif­fer­ent pro­ce­dures and in­sert­ed a tube through the nose in­to the stom­ach.

That plan failed and a brown-coloured sub­stance be­gan cours­ing through the ap­pa­ra­tus."They said they didn't have time to run tests," the child's fa­ther said.On Thurs­day night, Cross was ad­min­is­tered Panadol, which his body re­ject­ed. Lawrence said they al­so gave him Mor­phine .4 through the IV."He was so drowsy he couldn't move his hands or legs," she said.By Fri­day morn­ing, the same tests were done again and no ab­nor­mal­i­ties were found. It went fur­ther down­hill from there.

Lawrence and Cross claimed that a lead doc­tor ad­vised surgery but could not say what they were look­ing for.He said the doc­tor told them the child's con­di­tion was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing "and if we do not do the op­er­a­tion he will die be­cause he was too tired to breathe on his own. I didn't see that. He was still fight­ing them," she said.

Af­ter the hour-long surgery, Lawrence claimed a fe­male doc­tor told her she was sor­ry they cut the ba­by as his or­gans were func­tion­ing well.They rushed by with the child and his par­ents could not see him un­til he was placed on a new ven­ti­la­tor in ICU to help him breathe."One of the nurs­es came and said there were dif­fi­cul­ties in the surgery," Lawrence said.It was then they were told that his heart had stopped beat­ing af­ter the surgery.Less than one hour lat­er, Cross' heart stopped four times and by the time they re­turned, they re­ceived news that he would not live to see morn­ing.Still baf­fled, the par­ents asked again: "Why did our child die?"

NCRHA, Min­istry of­fers help

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has of­fered its deep­est con­do­lences.

A press re­lease stat­ed that due process must be fol­lowed in or­der to as­cer­tain whether er­rors were made on the part of the NCRHA via its per­son­nel, iden­ti­fy any dis­crep­an­cies for any ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to be tak­en. In this re­gard, the fam­i­ly will be con­tact­ed by the NCRHA's Qual­i­ty De­part­ment.

The re­lease stat­ed the Au­thor­i­ty and the Min­istry of Health are both pre­pared to of­fer all nec­es­sary coun­selling to the fam­i­ly.