PM Gonsalves receives report on death of 4-year-old boy

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves says he asked for and has received a report on four-year-old Aveek Gerald who died on October 1 at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital in Kingstown.

Gonsalves, while speaking on the Issue at Hand programme on WE FM on Sunday October 8 said he knows the boy’s family “very well”, they being from South Rivers, a village in his constituency of North Central Windward.

He said he is “so sorry” about the death of little Aveek, and added that the report he received was based on a post mortem which was conducted on the child’s body.

While not divulging any information in the report, the Prime Minister observed that the information therein “doesn’t square with a number of things which are in the public domain.”

“If there are any errors made about anything, those errors must be admitted; but we mustn’t assume that there are errors, simply because something is alleged.”

Aveek was reportedly happy for his surgery, which was to correct a birth defect, as one of his legs was shorter than the other.

The ‘super hip procedure’, which was conducted by the World Paediatric Project (WPP), took place on Wednesday September 27.

The child was discharged from the hospital on Thursday; however he never bounced back to full health and was readmitted to the hospital on Sunday, where he subsequently died.

An autopsy performed on the child’s body on Wednesday October 4 at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital gave the cause of death as “massive upper GI bleed due to or as a consequence of acute haemorrhagic gastritis with perforation”. The autopsy report also said another significant condition contributing to the death, but not related to the disease or condition causing it was “coxa vara S/P left upper hip”.

The child was reportedly on a course of Ibuprofen to relieve his pain from the surgery.

The Prime Minister praised the World Pediatric Project (WPP) for the work it is doing in providing much needed health interventions to children in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

He credited the WPP with having done “remarkable service to the people of St Vincent and the Grenadines” over many years.

Gonsalves told radio listeners that since the WPP’s work began here in 2001, it has contributed health services valued at over EC$100 million, at no cost to the Vincentian recipients.

He said that from 2001 to now, the WPP has done over 10,000 medical consultations and performed over 1000 surgical interventions in SVG.

The Prime Minister assured the nation that the WPP is doing “phenomenal work” in St Vincent and the Grenadines, and stressed that the WPP is providing First World critical care for persons in SVG, from birth up to the age of 21 years old.