It is more for complaining against the health care system that I bring myself to write this letter, voicing my grief, believing that my son should have been alive instead of having to be making funeral arrangements for him.
After having been hospitalised for having a stroke, my son was yet able to walk when I took him to the outpatients clinic, until he suddenly became immobile.
When he had shown signs of turning for the worse the ambulance was called and he was taken to the Siparia health facility. The doctor attending to him informed me to get some things from home for him because he was surely sending him to the hospital.
On arrival at the hospital, however, I received a call from the health facility telling me that they had changed their mind about sending him.
I returned to the health facility to be told by the doctor that the senior doctor said he saw no reason to send him to the hospital so I was made to take him back home.
Back at home a couple weeks later, we had cause to call the ambulance again. The doctors at both the health facility and the hospital where he was now rushed to, had ominous news for me.
These doctors were now asking me why we took so long, after he became bed-ridden, to bring him to the hospital.
I told them why, but I want to tell this story to the national public as well. In my grief, it is my strong belief that my son could have been alive right now if a junior doctor’s prognosis was not shot down by a senior doctor’s.
Such a shameful state is our health care provision.
Winston M Patterson
Pepper Village, Fyzabad