Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of a man cur­rent­ly seek­ing treat­ment for a heart at­tack at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is ap­peal­ing for au­thor­i­ties to make haste in pro­cess­ing his COVID-19 swab so he can fi­nal­ly re­ceive the treat­ment he needs to save his life.

Ac­cord­ing to his daugh­ter Chan­tal Mo­hammed, around 4.30 pm on Wednes­day, he be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of a heart at­tack. An am­bu­lance was called around 3 am Thurs­day when he be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing short­ness of breath. He ar­rived at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal's ac­ci­dent and emer­gency de­part­ment around 4.30 am and around 9.30 am on Thurs­day a COVID-19 test sam­ple was tak­en while he was wait­ing in a vi­ral tent.

Mo­hammed said they were told that 65 per cent of his heart was dam­aged and the re­main­ing 35 per cent was very weak. They were told he need­ed to have an im­me­di­ate an­giogram and stent in­sert­ed which the hos­pi­tal could not per­form and it would need to be done pri­vate­ly.

"The doc­tor who called my mum on Fri­day ac­tu­al­ly told her once you can af­ford he needs to go pri­vate and get an an­giogram and pos­si­bly a stent. He said all the hos­pi­tal can do is keep him for at least a week and give him med­ica­tion," she told Guardian Me­dia.

But he could not be re­leased to seek the nec­es­sary treat­ment due to the pend­ing COVID-19 test re­sult which, up to Sun­day night was still pend­ing.

Chantal Mohammed

"It's now a race against time, the clock is tick­ing," Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia as she ex­plained that on Sun­day morn­ing, her fa­ther had fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions.

"The on­ly thing keep­ing us back was the COVID-19 re­sult...on Sun­day morn­ing...he start­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence some­thing called atri­al fib­ril­la­tion," she said.

"They didn't even give us the op­tion of swab­bing him pri­vate­ly," she said.

But now, Mo­hammed said, the op­tion for pri­vate treat­ment is no longer there as it's too risky to trans­port him to a fa­cil­i­ty.

"Now the best op­tion is to get in­to the car­di­ol­o­gy ward right in San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al where he could re­ceive the mon­i­tor­ing and as­sis­tance that he needs. Once we get him sta­ble, then we can make a de­ci­sion on trans­fer­ring him out," she said.

But even this can't be done un­til the hos­pi­tal re­ceives the COVID-19 test re­sult. She said the fam­i­ly was giv­en the pre­scrip­tion for med­ica­tion which they have to pur­chase and de­liv­er for him.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly every­body is be­gin­ning to get un­easy. My dad is be­gin­ning to get very scared," she said, es­pe­cial­ly since the fam­i­ly has had to re­ly on friends work­ing at the hos­pi­tal for up­dates.

"All these things that we found out were through friends work­ing in the hos­pi­tal."

She said the fam­i­ly is ex­treme­ly frus­trat­ed, fright­ened and des­per­ate.