A 27-year-old Carapichaima woman is dead after being warded at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope for complications after delivering a baby and her family is now demanding answers. Dead is Aldella Gill, 27, of Lennard Street, Bank Village. According to her younger sister Akeila Rogers, the woman gave birth to a baby boy 23 days ago but was suffering with breathing problems during her pregnancy.
Rogers said when her sister was pregnant she had a constant cough and went to the Couva District Hospital less than a month ago and was told that it could not be treated because she was pregnant. Rogers said after giving birth Gill was still in a lot of pain and her chest was hurting, so she went back to the Couva hospital and was sent home with medicine. When the medicine brought no relief, Gill returned to the Couva hospital eight days ago and was sent to the EWMSC where she was admitted.
Rogers said the doctors told them that Gill was suffering from a swollen heart and also had a chest and throat infection and would have to stay at the facility to receive proper treatment. But Rogers said Gill called her mother 20 times on Thursday and said she could not walk. When relatives visited the woman at the hospital her foot was swollen. During that visit, Rogers claimed that a nurse attending to her sister threw down all her pills and Gill was later given substitute drugs on the advice of a doctor.
On Friday, Rogers said, their mother went to see the doctor before their first rounds in the morning before going to check on Gill. Her mother sat waiting to see Gill for four hours, Rogers said, and was later told that her daughter had died around 11.35 pm on Thursday night. Rogers said they now want Health Minister Fuad Khan to undertake an investigation into the matter to see if negligence was responsible for her death. Rogers said an autopsy is carded for Monday. This is the second tragedy to hit the family in less than a year.
It was only last November that Andy Rogers, Gill’s father, who was a prisons officer, was murdered in Malabar. Attempts to contact Khan yesterday were unsuccessful as calls to his cell phone went unanswered.