Highlighted By Ray Ray Lilly | In a heartfelt address, the mother of 16-year-old Onessia Andrea Euronica Andrews expressed profound grief and frustration over the circumstances leading to her daughter’s death at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). She believes that if her daughter had received timely medical attention, she might still be alive today.
“If they had found my baby girl complaining, she would still be here,” the grieving mother stated. She recounted the events leading up to Onessia’s critical condition, highlighting a lack of urgency and action from medical staff during her daughter’s treatment.
On the Friday night before her hospitalization, the mother had taken Onessia to Enmore Hospital, where a doctor on call informed her that he had a critical patient to attend to. Meanwhile, her daughter was in pain, exhibiting a high heart rate and unusually high blood pressure for her age. “She wasn’t deemed critical,” the mother noted, despite her alarming symptoms.
The mother revealed that Onessia went without food and fluids for an entire day. “I had to ask for them to give her fluids, and they kept saying, ‘Yes, we will tell the nurse,'” she recalled, expressing her frustration at the delays.
Once admitted to GPHC, Onessia’s situation did not improve. The mother claimed that her daughter was left lying in the Accident & Emergency department for hours without urgent care. “I kept asking what they were doing,” she recounted. Despite her deteriorating condition, medical staff decided to ward Onessia instead of transferring her directly to the High Dependency Unit (HDU) or Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Within 24 hours of her arrival at GPHC, Onessia’s condition worsened to critical status, prompting a transfer to the HDU due to aspiration, though the cause remained unclear. “I held my child’s hands as she fought,” the mother said, her voice choked with emotion. “What I saw during prayer broke me, but I held on.”
The mother expressed her dismay that Onessia did not receive the critical attention she needed, stating, “From Enmore to before she was handed over to the ICU team, the system failed my child. They failed her.” She emphasized that had the situation involved a member of the medical staff’s family, more decisive action would have been taken from the beginning.
“They were ready to send her home even though she was not walking,” she lamented, pointing out that it took a significant rise in her daughter’s blood pressure before any serious intervention occurred.
As she mourns the loss of her eldest child, she reiterated her belief that timely action from medical personnel could have changed the outcome. “They took my eldest child from me,” she said, filled with sorrow and anger at the system that she feels let her daughter down.
This tragic case has raised important questions about the adequacy of emergency care and the protocols in place at medical facilities, prompting calls for a review of practices to ensure that no family endures such heartache in the future.
