Hospital
A 10-year-old endured a nightmare of pain until staff at the Starship finally ordered the scan that identified the cause. Her family believe the health system owes her an apology, writes Hannah Martin.
A 10-year-old girl who endured ‘‘excruciating’’ abdominal pain for more than a month was not given a scan which could have identified the issue sooner, say her parents.
Ben and Tali Rose took daughter Becky – writhing in pain and ‘‘screaming uncontrollably’’ – to the Starship children’s hospital’s emergency department seven times between September and October.
Six weeks after their first visit to Starship, a CT scan showed Becky’s bowel had perforated and infectious fluid had pooled in her pelvis.
Her parents say Auckland District Health Board’s repeated failure to perform a scan sooner caused Becky harm. However, the DHB maintains that Becky was scanned at the appropriate time.
In August, Becky was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel condition which causes abdominal pain, severe diarrhoea, weight loss and malnutrition.
On September 3, Becky started screaming and complaining of pain in her pelvis. It was different to any pain she’d experienced with her Crohn’s. She was also experiencing intense discomfort when passing urine.
Becky was so distressed that she was taken to Starship’s ED in an ambulance.
She was given heavy-duty painkillers morphine and tramadol. Doctors gave her an ultrasound looking into the possibility she might have an appendicitis or a flare up relating to Crohn’s.
After five days in hospital, including her 10th birthday, Becky and her family were sent home without a solid answer.
It was ‘‘absolute torture’’, mum Tali Rose told Sunday News.
‘‘I cannot describe the pain she was in . . . doctors [at Starship] were shocked.’’
Each time they visited hospital, the Roses were told the pain was related to Becky’s Crohn’s.
At no point was an MRI or CT done in Starship to investigate the source of the pain.
On October 3, Becky received her first treatment for Crohn’s at Starship when Humira was administered. Shortly afterwards, she fell to the floor in agony.
Her mother carried her back to ED, where she was admitted and given fentanyl.
Just the day before, via an email to the Roses, a specialist at Starship had recommended Becky have a pelvic MRI to assess her pain passing urine.
In the email, the doctor told the Roses he was concerned about Becky’s pain, and had personally ordered an MRI scan. But the scan was not carried out.
Between September 30 and October 3, DHB-employed radiographers – who perform X-rays, MRI and CT scans – were on intermittent strike.
The withdrawal of labour forced hospitals around the country to reschedule patients and delay elective procedures, running scans for only the most urgent cases.
The Roses say hospital staff
‘Everything in her body broke down.’ TALI ROSE
year at $12.45 billion a year, but estimates it could be as high as $27.5b.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is leading a manhunt to track down Tse, who is said to live a lifestyle of extraordinary wealth, flying by private jet and gambling millions of dollars at a time, protected by a phalanx of Thai kickboxers.
Officers from the New Zealand Police’s National
Organised Crime Group are understood to be helping in the effort to locate Tse.
Detective Superintendent Greg Williams confirmed police were working with other law enforcement agencies to counter transnational groups including Sam Gor.
‘‘We are aware that New Zealand is a target for multiple transnational networks, and expect the Sam Gor syndicate to be among those.’’ He said the collaborative approach had seen 20 transnational criminal cells dismantled by the National Organised Crime Group and NZ Customs since 2017.
The amount of pure methamphetamine being seized in New Zealand has increased dramatically this year. About 1500kg was confiscated in the first nine months of the year, a more than 50 per cent increase on previous years.
Tse was a ‘‘known drug trafficker’’ who had served time in prison in the United States for importing meth. But after being released in 2006, he was able to bring together several triads into a ‘‘super syndicate that we’ve never really seen the size of before’’, said Douglas.
The syndicate’s vast tentacles spread from the meth factories in Myanmar, where it has access
to limitless quantities of precursors and talented chemists, to the huge ports of neighbouring Thailand, where drugs are smuggled to every corner of the Asia-Pacific region, often embedded in industrial products such as the electric motors of the massive September bust in Auckland.
Douglas said Sam Gor are so dominant that they’re able to guarantee shipments will reach distributors. If one consignment is seized by police, they will simply send another one.
‘‘They can afford to lose shipments because meth is so profitable. Even though it’s a small market, if you can get it to New Zealand you can make many, many more times than what you can elsewhere.’’
Tackling such a dominant force requires a different strategy, with greater cooperation between international law enforcement agencies, and greater emphasis on education and health treatments, said Douglas.