Thursday April 30, 2009
An overdose of paracetamol said to have killed boy
By RASHITHA A. HAMID
KUALA LUMPUR: The family of a seven-year-old boy has alleged that he died after being given a prescription overdose by a doctor in a government clinic here.
P. Thirishanraj was in a coma from Saturday evening, before being pronounced dead at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital (KLH) yesterday.
According to Thirishanraj’s grandfather, Datuk N. Muneandy, the boy was taken to the government clinic after he had a fever on Friday afternoon.
He said the doctor prescribed the boy medication of two 500mg paracetamol tablets to be taken four times daily.
Distraught dad: N.Parasmeshwaran carrying the body of Thirishanraj after he was brought back from the hospital Wednesday.(Inset)Thirishanraj in his kindergarten photo. However, after taking the medicine three times, the boy became weak and dizzy, forcing the family to rush him to a private clinic on Saturday.
“When we showed the doctor the medicine given earlier, he said it was an overdose and asked us to take Thirishanraj to KLH,” he said when met at his house last night.
The doctor even wrote a referral stating the boy was given an overdose of the medication.
Thirishanraj was admitted to KLH but the doctors there assured the family he was fine after conducting tests on him.
However, Muneandy said, several hours after he was admitted, the boy suffered swelling of the brain and went into a coma.
“After that, he depended on the machine to breathe,” he said, adding that the doctors also took samples to be sent to the lab.
Yesterday, doctors told Thirishanraj’s family that they wanted to do another test on him but the family refused them permission and asked the doctors to remove the boy from the machine.
Thirishanraj was pronounced dead at 6.05pm, after the machine was removed.
However, the ordeal did not end there for the family, who were then told that all documents and files pertaining to Thirishanraj’s check-up had gone missing.
“The referral letter given by the doctor from the private clinic was also claimed to be missing,” Muneandy said.
The family were yet to be told the cause of the boy’s death.
Muneandy said they then returned to the private clinic and got another copy of the letter, before lodging a report at the Sentul police headquarters last night.
The family did not allow a post mortem on the boy, whose body was brought back to their house in Taman Rainbow, Jalan Ipoh about 9pm.
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