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NO OXYGEN FOR DYING DOCTOR

By AZARD ALI Newsday TT

DOCTOR DEEPAK MAHABIR who was a chest medicine consultant, died because there was no oxygen breathing apparatus in an Emergency Health Service (EHS) ambulance which responded to a call from Dr Mahabir’s Bel Air Gardens home on Friday morning after he suffered an asthma attack.

This claim was made yesterday by Mahabir’s wife, Dr Chandra Sinanan-Mahabir, who intends to forward a letter of complaint to the Ministry of Health on how her husband, at age 49, died gasping for air while she begged EHS paramedics to use air-breathing apparatus to administer oxygen to him. But there was none in the ambulance which responded to her emergency call around 1 am. Sinanan-Mahabir was said to be grieving and angry and too distraught to speak to Sunday Newsday yesterday. But through her sister Sharda Sinanan Boller, an attorney at law, Mrs Sinanan-Mahabir said: "He got an acute asthma attack in bed around 1 am. She (Sinanan-Mahabir) tried to resuscitate him and telephoned an ambulance. She kept him breathing for about 20 minutes until the ambulance arrived," Sinanan-Bollers said. Sinanan-Mahabir, in the statement, said that she kept her husband alive using inhalers and administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

"When the ambulance arrived and before the paramedics could attend to him, she (Dr Sinanan-Mahabir) told them (paramedics) the nature of the illness and asked them to administer oxygen. That was not done," Sinanan-Bollers said. Reading her sister’s statement, Sinanan-Bollers said the doctor’s wife who is herself a chest physician requested the paramedics bring an Ambubag (which is a self inflating bag with a non rebreathing valve to provide positive pressure ventilation during resusucitation with oxygen or air). This was not done. They were trying to carry him to the ambulance," the statement said. The statement continued that Mrs Sinanan-Mahabir accompanied her husband to the hospital but even then, no breathing apparatus was attached to him. "There was none in the ambulance," the statement said. Sinanan-Mahabir through the statement indicated that she intends to officially inform the Ministry about the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death, which according to her statement, could have been avoided had there been an oxygen tank in the ambulance.

An irony of the situation is that the late Dr Mahabir treated asthma and other chest-related ailments almost on a daily basis. As a specialist in internal medicine, Mahabir was the former Head of the Caura Chest Hospital and Director of the Ministry of Health Metabolic Unit. He was director of Nutrition in the Ministry for ten years and acted as Medical Chief of Staff of the Port-of-Spain General Hospital where he ran the diabetic outpatients clinic. Mahabir was a senior examiner and lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at the Eric Williams’ Medicial Sciences Complex. He was Principal Medical Officer of Health (PMOH) (Community Service) and also PMOH (Institutions). Mahabir has to his credit, over 29 publications in international medical journals. The Mahabirs have three children, two of whom are national scholarship winners. Dr Mahabir was scheduled to take up the position as medical chief of staff at the San Fernando General Hospital from tomorrow.

Contacted yesterday, one of the Team Leaders of the EHS, Tabitha Murray, told Sunday Newsday that no formal complaint from the Mahabir family of the failure of the attending paramedics to administer resuscitation to Mahabir had been made. She said all ambulances without the life-saving equipment call Non Re-breathers, were "taken off the road." Murray said that as far as she was aware, all functioning units are equipped with oxygen tanks and breathing apparatus. Last year, paramedics shut down the ambulance service throughout the country due to a lack of life-saving equipment on them.

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Dr Deepak Mahabir dies of suspected asthma attack
NO OXYGEN FOR DYING DOCTOR
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