Saved from death against all odds
Amidst the fear of death and disease brought on by this virulent dengue epidemic, many men, women and children have been pulled from the brink of death by dedicated health staff in hospitals across the country.
Consultant and junior doctors, senior and junior nurses and minor staff have dedicated their time and energy, without thinking of how tired or over- stretched they are to serve their countrymen.
On a bed in the Dengue Unit of the Negombo Hospital is just one such case of being saved against all odds. Tiny sevenmonth-old Huzaifi is in deep sleep, sometimes a smile curling around his tiny lips, while his mother is at his bedside.
Rushed to a private hospital in the area from Periyamulla when he got fits due to high fever, it was on Monday that there had been a frantic call to the Negombo Hospital to send someone to save this baby’s life. The Consultant Paediatrician Dr. Wijesinghe had rushed there only to find that the little one was inert – there was no pulse, he was not breathing and almost dead.
Labouring to get intravenous access, they had intubated Huzaifi who had bi-lateral pleural effusions and rushed him to the Dengue Unit while hand-ventilating him.
Putting him on the bed next to the one occupied by the unit’s Head Nurse W.A. Lalitha Ranjanie who has also been struck down by Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever, the staff recall how she attempted to get off her sick bed -- with platelets down to 45,000, the saline drip on and fluid leakage occurring within her body -- to help put in a cannula for Huzaifi.
It is a similar tale with a 17-year- old brought in with “massive bleeding” from three gastric ulcers, a haematocrit count of 63% and prolonged shock and how the state system works and responds with essential drugs, all free of charge, to save lives.
He had been given three vials of Factor 7 which cost close to a million rupees and eight pints of blood, it is learnt.
Each and every day, life-and-death battles waged and men, women and children pulled out from the very jaws of death not only at Negombo but across Sri Lanka.