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Monday, July 21, 2025

Dead baby’s brother now hospitalised

by

2069 days ago
20191121

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter los­ing her three-year-old daugh­ter Pre­to­ria Smith to what was sus­pect­ed to be the H1N1 virus, Day­wa­tee Sinanan is now pray­ing to God to save the life of her two-year-old son Pre­ston.

The child is cur­rent­ly ward­ed in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Doc­tors are now run­ning mul­ti­ple tests to see whether he too be­came ill af­ter con­tract­ing a virus.

Pre­ston is al­ready suf­fer­ing from symp­toms such as body pains, fever and short­ness of breath and Sinanan said doc­tors told her he had a 90 per cent chance of hav­ing sick­le cell dis­ease.

This makes him es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to com­pli­ca­tions from the H1N1 swine flu virus.

The child had been sick for sev­er­al days be­fore his sis­ter Pre­to­ria died at their Sum Sum Hill, Clax­ton Bay home and Sinanan was con­vinced he was mak­ing a full re­cov­ery. Now she be­lieves she was wrong.

“I am in the hos­pi­tal since last night. My son is on drips and he is sleep­ing most of the time. I am very wor­ried. I can­not bear to lose him too,” Sinanan said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

 She added, “He has a 90 per cent chance of sick­le cell dis­ease. They are do­ing tests to make sure he is OK.  I thought he had re­cov­ered. They did bloods last night and I am wait­ing for the di­ag­no­sis. I am so wor­ried.”

She said she still had no clo­sure over Pre­to­ria’s death. The tis­sue sam­ples tak­en from her body were still be­ing analysed and Sinanan said she would have to wait un­til next week to find out whether the child died from the H1N1 virus.

Sinanan said a doc­tor who did tests on Pre­to­ria’s body told her child’s or­gans failed af­ter she con­tract­ed H1N1 but the death cer­tifi­cate did not re­flect this, not­ing fur­ther analy­sis had to be done.

The tis­sue sam­ples tak­en for test­ing will show whether Pre­to­ria suc­cumbed to swine flu. How­ev­er, Sinanan said those re­sults will not be avail­able un­til next week.

Her hus­band Fran­cis Smith, a gro­cery work­er, has not been to work since the chil­dren fell ill.

It was Fran­cis who first got the virus and it spread to their el­dest daugh­ter Princess, who lat­er re­cov­ered. The two youngest chil­dren be­came ill and Pre­to­ria lat­er died be­fore her moth­er could take her for med­ical treat­ment. At the time, Sinanan said, she could not car­ry all three of them to the health cen­tre be­cause she had no trans­porta­tion and it was dif­fi­cult to man­age all three of them on her own.

Sinanan said she was hop­ing that the Min­istry of Health could vac­ci­nate all mem­bers of the fam­i­ly and every­one with whom they came in­to con­tact with. Even though it was not con­firmed that her daugh­ter died from swine flu, Sinanan said she was pray­ing that she would not lose her son as well.

Min­is­ter re­sponds

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said there was noth­ing in place for a health care unit to go in­to com­mu­ni­ties to iso­late and vac­ci­nate peo­ple at risk. In­stead, he said he has been ap­peal­ing to peo­ple to go to the health cen­tres. He al­so said that peo­ple who were al­ready sick could not be vac­ci­nat­ed.

Even though 100,000 vac­ci­na­tions are avail­able, Deyals­ingh said, on­ly 8,100 peo­ple have ac­cessed the vac­cines in a week and a half.

“This is hor­ri­bly low con­sid­er­ing all the hype in the me­dia. I my­self vis­it­ed three health cen­tres in the North and what I found was a to­tal lack of in­ter­est in get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed. Peo­ple don’t seem to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed,” he said.

He called on all preg­nant women, el­der­ly peo­ple over 65, those who were di­a­bet­ic, hy­per­ten­sive, chil­dren six months to five years, health care work­ers and peo­ple who smo­kee and are asth­mat­ic to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

For this year 14 peo­ple have died and 2,539 cas­es of sus­pect­ed in­fluen­za cas­es have pre­sent­ed, along with 100 con­firmed cas­es of the H1N1 virus. There were 18 con­firmed cas­es of H3N2 virus for 2019 and one con­firmed case of ‘un­sub­ty­peable in­fluen­za A’ virus.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of deaths this year are the el­der­ly and peo­ple suf­fer­ing from di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and obe­si­ty,” Deyals­ingh added.


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