Parents blame health system for death of infant

The parents of twenty-one month old Jaydan Guy are not only mourning his untimely passing, they are also blaming the weaknesses in the public health system for his death. The toddler choked on a red kidney bean and died six days later. The incident began to unfold at about eleven-fifteen on the morning of Wednesday July twenty-second when the bean slipped down little Jaydan’s throat and into his trachea, partially blocking the airways to his lungs. Initially the blockage severely restricted the baby’s breathing, but as the parents testified, the situation worsened at the Western Regional Hospital. Anna and Eckert Guy believe their little boy did not have to die. They think the unavailability of the instrument necessary to surgically remove the grain, and the loss of time before doctors advised them to seek help in Belize City led to little Jaydan’s death.

Eckert Guy, Father of Deceased
“When we arrived at the Emergency room, my finger was in the baby’s mouth because I was trying to keep his mouth open for him to have air because I know he wasn’t breathing well. So as we reached there the doctor said oh he’s having a seizure yoh know. I told him no my baby is not having a seizure, he swallowed something, he’s choking. At this time—I don’t know the name of the doctor—but she said it looks like a seizure and if anybody in the family have seizures. I told her I don’t know and I told them the baby is choking. So they tried to put air in his nose, the little holes and he would just pull it off. I saw he was conscious, he wake up and he was standing up and fighting these nurses on the table. At that time my wife came and a minute or two after my wife reached there too and they tried to peep down his throat and didn’t see nothing in there. So they said it’s a seizure and they told us take him to the x-ray room to get an x-ray. So we had to like take the baby and run to the x-ray room. We went there and it’s a little delay in there then he was on the table and the baby was crying daddy it hurt. He was up, he said daddy ih hurt and from there he just went into a little trance again.”

Anna Guy, Mother of Deceased
“They start putting drips on him and after about an hour being at the hospital, the baby was—well, I asked the doctor please if you can’t do anything where can I go. Do you have anything that can remove what’s inside of him because she told me it’s a foreign object. She said only Belize Healthcare Partners can remove it and I said well please send me there now with my baby, I need help urgently. She said hold on I need to stabilise the baby first. Then she continued—this was the doctor who was on call and then I begged her to go with me to Belize City so she eventually asked permission from the head doctor to accompany me in the ambulance to Belize City. They put the baby in the ambulance and then we had to wait for another twenty minutes or half an hour to get everything sorted out because the ambulance wasn’t really ready and there was an oxygen tank situation where there wasn’t enough oxygen in the ambulance and the nurses were in and out of the ambulance and by the time my baby got to Belize City, five minutes before he got to Belize City his heart went out.”