Jesse Ramdeo

A moth­er has been left to grieve the loss of her son, whom she be­lieves would have still been alive had she re­ceived State help so he could get the emer­gency treat­ment he need­ed.

Sta­cy-Ann Ass­ing said two-month-old Kaden Charles was ex­pect­ed to un­der­go surgery abroad but the fam­i­ly could not ac­cess mon­ey from the Chil­dren’s Life Fund in time.

Ass­ing yes­ter­day ag­o­nis­ing­ly held on to his death cer­tifi­cate, one of the few items of mem­o­ry she now has of her son, who passed away last Mon­day from a heart con­di­tion.

“He was not tak­ing any food. He wasn’t pass­ing urine, his whole body was dis­coloured. I rushed him to Mt Hope and they as­sessed him and they said it is coarc­ta­tion of the heart. He was not get­ting blood flow through the body,” she told Guardian Me­dia at her By­noe Trace home in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day.

Lit­tle Kaden spent on­ly two weeks with his fam­i­ly at their Ch­agua­nas home af­ter he was born. The re­main­der of his life he spent ward­ed at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope.

But as he bat­tled his heart con­di­tion, Kaden en­gulfed the hearts of those around him.

“Kaden was my life, I al­ways want­ed an­oth­er boy to even my chil­dren. God bless me with two boys and two girls and see­ing Kaden in a sit­u­a­tion like that, it re­al­ly breaks me. I was like fish out of wa­ter to do every­thing for my son.”

Sta­cy-Ann said giv­en her son’s di­ag­no­sis, she ap­proached the Chil­dren’s Life Fund in the hope of get­ting the ur­gent aid he need­ed for life-sav­ing surgery.

“When I went to Life Fund, Life Fund said the board of di­rec­tors has not signed any­thing and there is noth­ing that can be done overnight, so I said I know that’s noth­ing that can be done overnight but at the end of the day, he’s an emer­gency pa­tient.”

Ac­cord­ing to her, Kaden’s con­di­tion sta­bilised, pre­sent­ing a small win­dow for him to be trans­port­ed over­seas. How­ev­er, it was one that was shut soon­er than ex­pect­ed. Sta­cy-Ann is now des­per­ate to find out whether her son had a shot at sur­vival.

“As a moth­er, I want to find out why does it have to take so long for an emer­gency case to be ap­proved and that’s my biggest ques­tion through­out the whole or­deal.”

The griev­ing moth­er is now call­ing on the Chil­dren’s Life Fund au­thor­i­ties to pri­ori­tise cas­es to en­sure chil­dren ob­tain life-sav­ing med­ical care in a time­ly man­ner.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to a se­nior of­fi­cial at the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Au­thor­i­ty but there were no re­spons­es to our ques­tions.