The fam­i­ly of 71-year-old Diego Mar­tin moth­er of four and grand­moth­er of five, Claire Gill, who died at hos­pi­tal on Car­ni­val Mon­day be­cause she al­leged­ly could not source blood from the Blood Bank, wants the blood chit do­na­tion sys­tem to be re­placed to pre­vent oth­er fam­i­lies from los­ing their loved ones to the blood for mon­ey process.

Gill was ad­mit­ted to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for sus­pect­ed in­ter­nal bleed­ing on March 2 around 11 pm and med­ical tests were con­duct­ed. She died on March 4 at 4.04 pm. Her death cer­tifi­cate in­di­cat­ed she died from sep­ticemia, in­fec­tive en­do­cardi­tis, pneu­mo­nia up­per gas­troin­testi­nal haem­or­rhage and sec­ondary to duo­de­nal ul­cer and hy­per­ten­sion.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers con­tend, how­ev­er, that it was a lack of blood for Gill that was re­spon­si­ble for her demise dur­ing her emer­gency pro­ce­dure last Sun­day to try and stop the bleed­ing in her stom­ach.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, one of Gill’s rel­a­tives said, “When we vis­it­ed her Mon­day morn­ing, we no­ticed her con­di­tion was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. We asked a doc­tor what was her sta­tus be­cause she was hooked up to the ma­chin­ery mon­i­tor­ing her vi­tals, which were pret­ty low; 91 over 34 for a hy­per­ten­sive pa­tient.

“She had a pace­mak­er im­plant­ed on De­cem­ber 14, we were will­ing to do­nate blood on Mon­day, how­ev­er, the blood bank was closed, but the blood bank where blood was dis­bursed was open but they were ask­ing for chits which we didn’t have,” the rel­a­tive, who did not want to be named, said.

“The en­tire fam­i­ly is blood com­pat­i­ble with her; O pos­i­tive, six mem­bers of the fam­i­ly were el­i­gi­ble to do­nate blood but weren’t giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

The rel­a­tive said she want­ed the chit sys­tem to change as some­thing was clear­ly wrong, and ul­ti­mate­ly the doc­tors didn’t treat Gill with the ur­gency she de­served.

She sur­mised that the doc­tors weighed her chances of sur­vival and made a med­ical de­ci­sion, giv­en her pace­mak­er and her age that Gill might not make it and the valu­able blood should go to a younger per­son.

The woman said the clin­ic gave Gill an ap­point­ment on April 17, her birth­day, adding the fam­i­ly felt that four months was too long from the pace­mak­er im­plant date for her to wait as some­thing could go wrong.

She said the two doc­tors who per­formed the op­er­a­tion told her that the overuse of as­pirin tend­ed to wear the lin­ing of the stom­ach and it “could be a pos­si­ble cause for her death.”

The rel­a­tive claimed Gill need­ed about three to four pints of blood to come up to a sta­ble blood lev­el to sur­vive but on­ly re­ceived one pint. She said Gill was ad­mit­ted with a blood count of five when ide­al­ly it should have been at 11.

An­oth­er fam­i­ly mem­ber asked why Gill wasn’t giv­en the much-need­ed blood and at­ten­tion as swift­ly as a per­son with a gun­shot wound? He ques­tioned if she was in­deed sta­bilised how was the prog­no­sis dif­fer­ent and her sud­den death?

He said it was al­leged that hos­pi­tal per­son­nel tried call­ing the Blood Bank for more blood but this nev­er ma­te­ri­alised in time to save her life. The man said even dur­ing the dis­cus­sion with the pathol­o­gist, she said even if the fam­i­ly had chits there was no guar­an­tee of get­ting the re­quired blood, even if it was Gill’s type, as there was a short­age of blood in the bank and an un­will­ing­ness of Trinida­di­ans to do­nate blood.

NWRHA boss: Doc­tors did their best

North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) CEO Wendy Ali says doc­tors at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal did all they could to save the life of Claire Gill. She, how­ev­er, de­nied Gill’s death was as a re­sult of the un­avail­abil­i­ty of blood.

Com­ment­ing of Gill’s fam­i­ly’s claims, Ali said “We are very sym­pa­thet­ic on the pass­ing of Mrs Gill. How­ev­er, the post­mortem re­vealed and was re­flect­ed in her death cer­tifi­cate that the cause of death was not di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to haem­or­rhage or bleed­ing.

“She did re­ceive a blood trans­fu­sion, they did re­quest to pro­vide fur­ther blood if re­quired. How­ev­er, an emer­gency pro­ce­dure had been done by the doc­tors on Mrs Gill on the Sun­day morn­ing which they (fam­i­ly) were un­aware of to stop the bleed­ing, which was suc­cess­ful.

“Mrs Gill died as a re­sult of her un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions, there were oth­er is­sues, there were com­pli­ca­tions but of course I can’t dis­cuss that.”

Ali con­firmed that the blood col­lec­tion unit of the PoS­GH Blood Bank was closed on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day be­cause of Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties and there was no way the au­thor­i­ty could have kept it open.

How­ev­er, she said the blood bench was open if there was a need for the ur­gent col­lec­tion of blood and the hos­pi­tal could have fa­cil­i­tat­ed it, but in this case that was not re­quired. She said the NWRHA did an af­ter-ac­tion re­port of its Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties which re­vealed that there were no deaths over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od which were as a di­rect re­sult of the un­avail­abil­i­ty of blood.

Ali said in Gill’s case the au­thor­i­ty was sat­is­fied she was man­aged prop­er­ly and it was un­for­tu­nate that she passed away. She said the au­thor­i­ty ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Gill’s fam­i­ly dur­ing their pe­ri­od of loss.

Ali said there were nu­mer­ous fac­tors which al­so af­fect­ed the avail­abil­i­ty of blood, in­clud­ed a rare blood type.

She not­ed that as Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­cent­ly said in Par­lia­ment, one can­not force peo­ple to do­nate blood so avail­abil­i­ty and blood were con­tin­gent on peo­ple com­ing for­ward and do­nat­ing blood via the free do­na­tion ser­vice.

Dur­ing de­bate the Na­tion­al Bud­get de­bate Par­lia­ment last, Deyals­ingh point­ed out that the chit, cred­it and tran­si­tion­al cred­it sys­tem of blood dis­tri­b­u­tion and col­lec­tion was in­equitable and dan­ger­ous and peo­ple were be­ing forced to pay for blood do­na­tions in life-sav­ing sit­u­a­tions in­volv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers. He said then T&T will be moved to a 100 per cent vol­un­tary al­tru­is­tic sys­tem of blood do­na­tion which will elim­i­nate the need for peo­ple to go to risky donors and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion had been in­vit­ed to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to the Min­istry of Health.