She is now suing Southern Health District and three health care workers in the city of Portage la Prairie, alleging that her son did not receive timely medical care and treatment in 2017. Her statement of claim was filed on June 22 of this year in the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench. The health authority says it has not yet been served, a spokesman said Wednesday. So far no statements of defense have been filed and none of the allegations have been proven in court. The child, whom CBC News is not naming due to private health information, was born healthy in 2017, according to the statement of claim. In August, when he was one month old, he was taken to the Portage clinic to be circumcised by a doctor — an important part of his family’s Muslim faith. About four hours after the circumcision, the parents opened his diaper and found it stained with blood. They took him back to the clinic to see the doctor who performed the circumcision. He is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, accused of improperly circumcising and improperly monitoring the baby’s care. The doctor examined the baby, applied petroleum jelly and sent him home with his parents, the suit says.
He was sent home from the ER without treatment
Three hours later, the parents discovered the baby’s diaper was “saturated” with blood, according to the court document. They changed it and applied petroleum jelly, as the doctor had advised, but took the baby to the hospital in Portage la Prairie, where the same doctor worked in the emergency department. Around 7 p.m. — about an hour after being taken to the ER — the baby was discharged with no change in treatment, the statement of claim states. The parents returned to the hospital at 9:30 p.m., where the baby was attended to by a nurse, who is also named as the defendant. The nurse had trouble communicating with the family, who did not speak English very well, but told them the situation was not an emergency, the lawsuit says. They were sent back to the waiting room because there were no exam rooms available. The family waited, but around 10:30 p.m., the father approached the nurse, telling her again that the baby had been bleeding since the morning. He replied that there were patients who needed more urgent care and reiterated that the situation was not urgent. The child’s father said that if it wasn’t an emergency, they should just go home. The nurse said they could, but did not ask to look at the infant’s diaper or inspect the circumcision before leaving the hospital, according to the statement of claim. The nurse took the baby’s chart to another emergency room doctor, also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and explained what had happened. She signed the chart without inspecting the baby and did not give instructions to bring the child back to the hospital for treatment, the lawsuit states.
Airlift to HSC
The parents took the baby home, but later that night, he became paler and began to have difficulty breathing. He was rushed back to the hospital around 2:40 a.m., the statement of claim states. The same nurse saw the baby and noted that he was very pale and lethargic, so she took him to the triage office and admitted him as an emergency. The baby received an immediate blood transfusion, the lawsuit says, and was described as “catastrophically hemodynamically unstable” — a condition that occurs when there is abnormal blood pressure that can cause insufficient blood flow to organs — and in need of “critical measures of salvation”. He was taken by STARS ambulance to the Health Sciences Center in Winnipeg, about 80 kilometers east of Portage la Prairie, at 7:45 a.m. and was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit with hemorrhagic shock, which occurs when the body begins to shut down due to blood loss. The baby was taken by STARS Ambulance to Winnipeg and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit at the Health Sciences Centre. An MRI showed he had suffered severe brain damage. (CBC) The statement of claim states that an MRI showed the baby had severe brain damage and remained in the intensive care unit for two weeks. The mother alleges in the lawsuit that the injuries her son suffered were caused or contributed to by the negligence of the two doctors, the nurse and the health district named in the lawsuit, which resulted in “severe and permanent harm.”
Severe brain damage
The child, now five years old, lives with a motor disability, irreversible brain damage, impaired vision and speech and developmental delay. “He will continue to suffer the consequences of his disabilities for the rest of his life,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit seeks compensation for the child’s injuries, as well as compensation for the parents, who must provide “emergency care.” The lawsuit also alleges Southern Health District and the hospital were negligent for failing to have a personal interpreter available to help the family deal with a “significant language barrier” and failing to provide cultural sensitivity training to staff. Martin Pollock, the mother’s lawyer, says at the time, the parents were deeply upset about their son’s continued bleeding. “You can imagine that when people are emotional and it affects the health of their newborns… that the struggle [with English] is getting stronger,” he said. In its statement on Wednesday, Southern Health said its health centers offer language access services through Shared Health, the provincial health service. This service provides patients with interpretation services via phone, video or face-to-face, the health authority said. Emergency interpretation services are also available through a contracted resource that provides 24/7 on-demand services in more than 200 languages, according to the health authority.
