Health Minister Fuad Khan has ordered the management of the Port-of-Spain General Hospital to keep Sea Lots accident victim Ryan Rampersad hospitalised for as long as he needs health care. He has also ordered the North West Regional Health Authority to probe who gave the order to discharge Rampersad, 20, although he is still in need of critical care.
The news brought relief to his mother Pearl James, who said yesterday she believed her son would walk, talk and play with his children one day although he has been left paralysed from the neck down since the February 24 accident, which left three people dead. James said doctors had indicated her son was 98 per cent paralysed and had suffered brain damage. She said doctors said they had done all they could for Rampersad.
She said doctors at the hospital had told them last week they were discharging Rampersad yesterday but after it was reported in the media, hospital authorities said that was not so when the family visited him yesterday. “They (doctors) told us last week they were discharging him but after the news came out they denied that this was the case,” she said. In the report yesterday, Khan said he intervened and insisted that Rampersad be given good care.
Even so, James yesterday questioned the type of care her son was receiving. “This morning I had to ask the nurse to check his bed sores as they were oozing and the nurse told me they checked it once a day or once every two days.” James said last week when she visited her son, she found him choking on mucus from a cold. “He needs care. He just needs care and we are not seeing the care being given. We sometimes have to run down doctors from floor-to-floor.”
She said she believed Rampersad’s body needed time to heal. Up until yesterday, James said her son’s wife, Sally Ann, and two children—Naomi and Nyron—had not received any financial assistance.