RAD­HI­CA SOOKRAJ

Its been four years since her 21-year-old daugh­ter Karuna Ram­per­sad died while re­cu­per­at­ing as a pa­tient at San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Yet Para­mat­tie Ram­per­sad can­not find clo­sure for the mys­te­ri­ous and trag­ic death. Ram­per­sad be­lieves that Karuna was mur­dered while she lay help­less on a hos­pi­tal bed. Po­lice sus­pect that a woman, who had a pre­vi­ous dis­pute with Karuna, went in­to the hos­pi­tal dur­ing vis­it­ing hours and al­leged­ly gave her a lethal in­jec­tion of poi­son some­time in No­vem­ber 2007. She died a week lat­er. An au­top­sy con­duct­ed by Dr East­lyn Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris con­firmed that death was due to paraquat poi­son­ing, yet Ram­per­sad can­not un­der­stand why the po­lice have not ar­rest­ed the killer and why hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials were re­luc­tant to pro­vide her with med­ical records.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad said Karuna was tak­en to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Oc­to­ber 8, 2007, af­ter suf­fer­ing from acid re­flux. Ram­per­sad said Karuna was a di­a­bet­ic and she de­pend­ed on a dai­ly dose of in­sulin to sus­tain her life. As the youngest child, Ram­per­sad said she took spe­cial care of her daugh­ter. On the day she was hos­pi­talised, Ram­per­sad said she host­ed a Hin­du prayer meet­ing and Karuna had eat­en cur­ried, man­go, chan­na, pota­toes and roti. "We were on the lunch ta­ble and she told me that she com­plained that she had an up­set stom­ach. She said her tum­my was feel­ing fun­ny. I told her that I was call­ing an am­bu­lance but she said no," Ram­per­sad re­called.

By 5 pm, when the pains did not sub­side, Karuna was tak­en to Princes Town Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal. "The doc­tors saw her and said that Karuna had to go to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Her blood sug­ar was drop­ping. I took her to San Fer­nan­do, we stayed all night be­fore she got a bed. "They did blood tests and they told me it was acid. Be­cause she had vom­it­ed, the doc­tor said her blood sug­ar was down and it would be a few days be­fore she was dis­charged. "They said she had a case of ke­toaci­do­sis (a po­ten­tial­ly life threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tion in pa­tients with di­a­betes)," Ram­per­sad said. Karuna was giv­en in­tra­venous flu­ids and a week lat­er, Ram­per­sad was ad­vised that she need­ed to get four pints of blood be­cause doc­tors had done a CT scan and had seen a mass on Karuna's pla­cen­ta.

Ram­per­sad said she scraped all her sav­ings and pur­chased blood for her daugh­ter. "How­ev­er, doc­tors took an­oth­er CT scan and said that they were not see­ing the mass any­more, so they took the blood and gave it to an­oth­er child who was in the hos­pi­tal," she said. Wary of more hos­pi­tal mis­takes, Karuna said she kept a care­ful eye on the med­ical notes but when­ev­er she asked ques­tions,the nurs­es would get an­gry. "One day the doc­tor said Karuna's blood sug­ar was not reg­u­lat­ing. The nurs­es start­ed to ac­cuse me of bring­ing in­sulin in the hos­pi­tal. I nev­er used to do that. "They made me emp­ty my bag. It was hu­mil­i­at­ing but I did what they told me. They had a tube in­sert­ed in Karuna's col­lar bone, so I couldn't bring her home," Ram­per­sad said.

By the fifth week, Ram­per­sad said Karuna was well on her way to re­cov­ery. How­ev­er, dur­ing the first week of No­vem­ber, Ram­per­sad said a strange woman came in­to the ward and gave Karuna an in­jec­tion. "My daugh­ter start­ed to com­plain that her hand was hurt­ing. Af­ter that she start­ed to get worse. The doc­tors did not know what was hap­pen­ing to her. My daugh­ter told me she did not recog­nise who gave her the in­jec­tion," Ram­per­sad said. When Karuna died on No­vem­ber 24, 2007, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer took charge of the body and an au­top­sy was done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre which re­vealed that she died of paraquat poi­son­ing. Ram­per­sad said she want­ed to know how Karuna end­ed up get­ting poi­son in her blood stream.

Hos­pi­tal records

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer said sev­er­al at­tempts were made to get the med­ical records for Karuna Ram­per­sad. "We ap­plied for it on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. On the last oc­ca­sion, we were ad­vised to ap­ply to a judge in cham­bers for the med­ical records which is a strange re­quest be­cause we al­ways get pa­tient's records read­i­ly through the ad­min­is­tra­tion de­part­ment," the of­fi­cer said.

De­tec­tives said they con­duct­ed sev­er­al in­ter­views re­gard­ing the death but could not lay any charges un­less med­ical records were sup­plied. Med­ical Di­rec­tor of San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Lester Goetz, was con­tact­ed about the al­le­ga­tions yes­ter­day af­ter which he im­me­di­ate­ly arranged a meet­ing with Ram­per­sad. Chair­man of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe could not be reached on his cel­lu­lar phone for a com­ment.