IRELAND: 4-year-old Indian child dies in Ireland hours after returning home from hospital

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Dublin: Indian parents mourn the loss of their daughter days before her birthday. Nalini and Varun Singh, parents of 4-year-old Ahana Singh, say that their only daughter's last word "Papa" haunts them after they arrived in the country, who loved Ireland so enthusiastically and watched YouTube videos. The little girl was brought to the hospital in a comatose state and died hours after returning home.

“I saw her in the morgue, but I could only stay for 10 minutes,” Nalini says. “I thought she was very cold. I feel her more in my heart than in that body. When I touched her I couldn’t get the warmth that I got when I used to hug her. That was not the feeling I wanted to keep for the rest of my life.”
The little girl’s father often thinks of the day she was born and he held her for the first time — December 15, 2017 — at Sahara Hospital, in Lucknow, India. “I cannot explain that feeling,”
Premature by a few weeks, Ahana “came into this world early and left early”, says her mother. “I feel as if she knew she had less time with us and was making the most of it.”

Last Monday, Ahana started coughing once every 2 hours. Her parents saw it as an aftereffect of flu season. But as a precaution, the newcomers tried to register with a GP, but without success. They were waiting for the PPS number and everything. A few GP surgeries called were told they were not taking any new patients,

At that time the couple didn't think it was anything to worry about and Ahana went to school. She started at St Brigid's Girls NS three weeks ago. The next day she started complaining of some pain in her neck. That was the first time she complained of pain around her neck. She never complained about anything. Unable to get a doctor, Mrs Singh found a virtual GP who said "you should be checked for meningitis".

However, on Thursday she developed fever and high temperature. So she immediately called a taxi to bring them to Temple Street. “Ahana vomited in the cab. I was shocked. It was the first time she had vomited since birth. At the hospital, she vomited in the corridor and was very lethargic.”

While Ahana sat on her mother's lap, her father had to sit outside the emergency room: only one parent was allowed inside. With all the chairs filled and nowhere to sit like benches, Varun spent nearly six hours, forced to rely on texts from his wife for news of his daughter's condition.

The doctor saw Ahana six hours later. Please ask them to give her some antibiotics – or something,” Mr. Singh texted his wife around midnight, standing yards away. “them said, It must be some kind of infection… it's not normal, not prescribed any medication ,” she replied.
She remembers a member of staff telling her "Welcome to Ireland". "They didn't do any tests, X-rays or blood tests," he says.

Nalini says that from hospital they gave her daughter medicine to prevent vomiting and was told that she will get better. she's confident and believed that word "doesn't require emergency treatment."

“What could go wrong? Why was she bleeding? We know [now] it was Strep A, but how did it happen and why? Maybe we should have protested more, maybe if she had gotten an antibiotic things would have been different. "
Inside triage, a nurse gave Mrs. Singh two bottles of water to feed the dehydrated Ahana. In India, if you're dehydrated they put you on a drip, she says. “Sometimes you need that IV drip to bring you back to normal. I was hoping they would give her a drip or something to remove the excess dehydration. But they were asking me to force the liquid down her throat.

CHI declined to comment on this. In response, a spokesperson for Children's Health Ireland said it offered its "sincere condolences to the Singh family on the loss of their beloved Ahana".

The death of a child is a heartbreaking event for family, friends and loved ones. When a child dies or comes into contact with one of our hospitals, the family receives bereavement support from specialist multi-disciplinary teams at Children's Health Ireland.

“Children's Health Ireland cannot comment on individual cases. When a patient or family makes personal information public, this does not relieve the hospital/CHI of its responsibility to maintain/enhance the patient's confidentiality at all times. However, the spokesman added: "A review is underway and CHI is in direct contact with and supporting the family at this time.

It was 4.10 pm on December 3rd. Hours earlier, around 5 p.m., Ahana returned home from Temple Street Children's Hospital after her parents were told she had a chest infection.

“Papa,” four-year-old Ahana Singh whispered, struggling to speak. Her father Varun placed her head on his shoulder and pressed one side of his face to hers.
"What's wrong?" he asked rubbing her back. "What's up Ahana?" But her body was exhausted and she was fainting. “Come on Ahana, tell papa what's wrong,” he said as her mother Nalini looked on in dismay. Then she started falling unconscious. There was a 'click, click sound and blood coming from the nose and mouth in the hand and that's it - she was gone. The fact that her last word was 'Papa' haunts me every second of every day," he recalls now.

At the last minute, Mrs. Singh performed CPR, but Ahana did not respond.

“I don't know where the courage came from - but I did CPR for 20 minutes. When the paramedics arrived they told us there was nothing they could do. I am a health and safety officer but the fact is I could not save my own daughter's life.
"It happened very quickly and within 10 to 15 minutes she became very ill," says Nalini. “We were sure it was nothing serious and just a flu. It never crossed our minds that it was going to take her life.
"I told her: 'We will decorate the Christmas tree,'" says Ahana's father. “Before that, I told her that it would be okay, that her birthday would be soon. She said: 'Yes papa, yes papa, it will be alright.

Shortly after her death, gardaí arrived and protocol dictated the sealing of the family home. Mr. Singh and Mrs. Singh were put up in a hotel for the night. Their daughter's body has been taken for an inquest as officers need to investigate the circumstances of her death. After 2 days her parents released her again.

The hotel where they were supposed to stay that night was on the beach. Ahana always wanted to visit a beach. The next morning they showed her a video on her phone of a bird that had landed on the windowsill of their hotel room. They felt it was a sign. "Please flap your wings if you are happy." And so did the bird.

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Nalini says she feels an "insurmountable" guilt. “I should have protected my daughter,” says her husband. "If we hadn't come here this wouldn't have happened." Nalini says she can no longer find the purpose of her life. "We don't know how to start the day and we don't know how to end it." "I lost faith in everything," says Ahana's father. “When she died I told, I would make us happy, but I didn't know how to be happy. She made us happy. I can't laugh, only cry.

As Ahana lay in the mortuary, her father sang nursery rhymes for half an hour. "We dreamed of her leaving us married one day, but we never thought she would leave us in a coffin and go to a cemetery," he says.

Children's Health Ireland (CHI) cannot comment on individual cases, but confirmed they are reviewing the care they received. In fact, Ahana had a bacterial infection called Strep A, which was killing her. However, it is clear that the hospital, which should have provided treatment for such a serious infection, sent them back and showed complacency in the child's treatment.

Dreaming of living in Dublin and watching YouTube videos of the city on her father's phone, Ahana left her parents exactly two months after arriving in Ireland and two weeks before her fifth birthday, Ahana was laid to rest in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery.