Patient goes wild, dies minutes after injection

CEBU, Philippines - A grieving husband took to Facebook his call for “justice” over the case of his wife who died allegedly because of Mandaue City Hospital staff's malpractice.

Cesar Coliflores, 42, uploaded a video of his wife Jocelyn, 40, going wild minutes after a medical attendant injected two powder vials or 750 milligrams of Cefuroxime into her dextrose to supposedly treat her urinary tract infection.

About 30 minutes from injection, however, Jocelyn reportedly felt uneasy and went wild. It was at this point that she asked one of her children to take a video of her.

"Video-hi ko dong... ilaha kong gipatay... Mga salbahis mo, ikiha ta mo…," a wild Jocelyn said in the video while pointing fingers apparently at the medical attendants.

An overseas Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia, Cesar was not at the hospital at the time of the incident but he said Jocelyn's sister and her eight-year-old son could not complain at that time because one of the doctors allegedly glared at them. 

Because she seemed untamed, hospital attendants reportedly tied Jocelyn up in her bed with the use of a white cloth and then injected her with diphenhydramine hydrochloric acid which is said to relax the senses.

A few moments after, she then lost consciousness and was declared dead 45 minutes after the first injection.

Gone viral

In hopes of getting "justice," Cesar uploaded the video on his Facebook account last January 13. As of yesterday, it has been shared more than 5,000 times.

Cesar, who arrived in the country on January 6, told reporters yesterday that Jocelyn was complaining of recurring fever before she finally agreed to get admitted to the hospital on January 2.

He stressed that fever was the only condition of this wife at the time she was admitted. In fact, he said, Jocelyn was the one who filled out the hospital admission form.

"Okay pa kaayo siya, lagsik pa kaayo og lawas. Nagkinataw-anay pa mi, nagtawagay man mi ana nga time. Ako siyang gipangutana kung unsa ra gyud iyahang gipamati… hilanat ra gyud nga on and off," Cesar said.

The husband questioned why the medical personnel administered medicine on his wife when the latter had not gone through any laboratory examinations.

Cesar also said Jocelyn's elder sister Sally and her 11-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son all witnessed what happened at the hospital room.

The family resides in Sitio Villamangga, Barangay Opao.

Jocelyn was buried last January 18 at Manpark Cemetery in Barangay Guizo, Mandaue City. She was a former unlicensed pharmacy attendant before she became a plain housewife.

 Autopsy results

Based on the death certificate issued by the hospital on January 2, Jocelyn died of "probable ruptured cerebral aneurism."

The results of autopsy conducted by the Regional Crime Laboratory Office revealed that the patient's exact cause of death was "sudden cardiac death and left ventricular hypertrophy."

Because of the discrepancy in the results, Cesar said they now want to be enlightened as to what had really cost his wife's life.

Hospital probe

Meanwhile, officials of Mandaue City District Hospital vowed to make their investigation into the case but said they have yet to receive a formal complaint on the matter.

"We're still going to investigate into it because there is no proper complaint received yet. We only got the news and saw what happened on Facebook but we did not receive any proper complaint," said hospital chief Malou Espinosa.

Espinosa said it was Dr. Antonette Alcantara who attended to the patient at the emergency room while Dr. Rachelle Ann Segovia was assigned at the hospital ward.

The hospital chief declined to answer on who actually gave the prescription to the patient, although Cesar earlier alleged that it was Alcantara.

Espinosa said they will be looking into patient's morbidity and mortality records, adding that based on their files, Jocelyn died of a ruptured blood vessel in the brain.

"There's nothing to complain of, nothing to worry about because in our part, we did our best. We did the right thing on the patient," Espinosa said.

The hospital will form a group of investigators that will probe on the two doctors and three nurses who were reportedly involved in the incident.

DOH intervenes

In another development, the Department of Health-7 will also launch a separate fact-finding team that will study the case.

DOH-7 officer-in-charge Elizabeth Tabasa hopes they will get a copy of a letter-complaint signed by Jocelyn's husband.

Tabasa said among the areas they will look into are whether the hospital observed standard operating procedures and whether it had basis in administering the prescriptions.

For his part, Mayor Jonas Cortes separately declined to comment on the issue but he vowed to deepen the police's investigation. (FREEMAN)