Doctor says five percent chance of survival for Williams

joel cervantes

As we said earlier, Williams was rushed to the Belize Health Care Partners Limited for medical attention and a team of doctors from the City’s three hospitals worked on him throughout the night during to stop massive internal bleeding and to repair serious damage to his small intestine.  Specialist at the Belize Health Care Partners, Dr. Joel Cervantes, sat down with News Five today to inform us about the extent of the injuries Williams suffered, the service doctors rendered to him, and the outlook.

Dr. Joel Cervantes, Specialist, Belize Health Care Partners

“The type of injury that he sustained is a life-threatening injury because of the nature of what we presume to be an expansive legion from a bullet wound. This has caused damage to several segments of the small intestine. It caused several little areas of bleeding, including a major pipe, blood vessel. This was repaired accordingly, the way it has to be done under standard protocol, by a team of qualified and highly-trained doctors from different institutions working together.”

Marion Ali

“I understand there had to be a series of three surgeries throughout the night. Did anything go wrong, why there had to be three?”

Dr. Joel Cervantes

“No, No, the nature of the injury, when a patient has such a severe injury, where there’s a lot of bleeding and practically by the time, you know its was a short space of time which he had received his injury and was brought to this institution and he was taken into surgery. But in that time he had bled approximately eighty five, ninety percent of the blood that circulates in his body. So when you do surgeries of this type, the first thing that is done is called damage control; and that was the objective of the surgery. Yes, he had to be taken to surgery on more than one occasion, but each time it was as a potential complication that would go arising, that could be solved by way of surgery, he was taken into surgery. The nature of the injury is a very life-threatening injury. So as hours go by, you go seeing potential complications, sometimes some of them can only be solved with medication, medical management, sometimes you have to do surgery or the combination of both. In his case, he needed the combination of both, surgery plus very advanced care in and intensive care setting. We perhaps have as country, might have eighty, eighty-five percent of the technology that our American colleagues have in this case; and knowing that , that hospital might has a little bit more technology and expertise than we do, we knew it was safe and it was the correct thing to do  to have him transferred to a specialty hospital in the U.S.”

Marion Ali

“So will his chances of pulling through?”

Dr. Joel Cervantes

“His chances are slim, I would say somewhere between approximately maybe five percent chance, best case scenario”

Marion Ali

“If he does survive, what quality of life will he have?”

Dr. Joel Cervantes

“We really can’t say that right now because the nature of his injuries, he has a lot of complications. He is going to spend, as he goes on a minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week basis. He could be weeks or months out of our country in an intensive care setting and even just in a hospital for a couple of months for recovery if he does survive. Quality of life is hard to say because any professional team, multi-disciplinary team that takes care of this knows that it is unpredictable what possible complications can arise. What I can say is that coming in very critical and being able to be flown out has been quite a victory in that sense because he was initially unstable and now he is stable. It’s not an easy situation, as group of doctors, nurses, professionals in the healthcare system to have to break this type of news but it is totally unjust if you lie to a person and you don’t tell them how severe an injury can be. We’re human beings, our lawyer colleagues, the general public, everybody is a human being, so we all feel; and we can see that they are having a lot of pain. And everybody we asked about , they’re have a lot of pain and I think this is a very emotional moment for them and I think that they need a lot of prayers and a lot of emotional and social support. We’re not really gonna  really see  the complications , as he’s over at another hospital; but as I always tell people ,I can safely say there’s a small glimmer of hope and you have to go for it all  they way. There’s a small chance of survival. The answer is yes.”

Marion Ali

“Prayers?”

Dr Joel Cervantes

“Prayers, I believe in prayers”

Williams has been a law partner to the Prime Minister for more than two decades. News Five will have continuous coverage on this developing story.