A 2-year-old girl is tonight in agonizing pain at her Lake Independence home, awaiting life saving surgery in a straightforward procedure. And why is she at home and not in a hospital being prepped for the procedure? Well, it's the story of a bureaucracy in tangles: the surgery she needs was once available at the KHMH but Belize's only two neurosurgeons who were working at the KHMH are no longer there. We'll tell you all about that in a few, but first...to the case of 2 year old Kimorah Leslie. Here's her story.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
All that 2 year old Kimorah Leslie can do today is cry, and ask to be hugged as comfort for what can only be imagined as excruciating pain that she is experiencing. The problem is this, a malfunctioning shunt. Her condition is called hydrocephalus or, as it is known, water-head. It causes what's known as cerebro-spinal fluid to accumulate in the space between her brain and her skull, creating intense pressure within the skull, and causing her head to get bigger. Kimorah's grandmother Shawn Lemott says the malfunction began about 5 days ago and since then it's been torture for the child.
Shawn Lemott,
"They have to put a shunt into her brain to drain out the water into her stomach. She will be two and the shunt started to malfunction because like how she is growing, the muscle has grown over the shunt and she needs an urgent surgery to repair it."
But repairing it means thousands of dollars because the procedure cannot be performed at the KHMH because Belize's only neurosurgeons, Dr. Joel Cervantes and Giovanni Lara no longer work at the KHMH. Meanwhile...
Shawn Lemott,
"We don't have the money and Medical Associates is charging $11,000. Loma Luz is charging $8,000 and we still don't have any of the money and the baby really needs the surgery urgently."
Alfonso Noble,
There is no way you can get the money?
Shawn Lemott,
"No way we can find the money. The Ministry of Health donated $1,000 already but we have to pay down at least $3,500 before the surgery begins and we really don't have that right now and the baby is really deteriorating fast because yesterday she was talking and now this morning she isn't even talking, she isn't moving, or nothing. The doctor says the fluid is pressuring her brains, it is squeezing it, and that is making her not function. My best hope is for somebody to jus try help us with some money or something or the doctor decide to do the surgery at Karl Heusner which I know won't happen. The doctor usually do the surgery at KHMH but this time I don't know what is going on with the doctors them, they have their own problems."
But now that impasse at the country's national referral hospital,. Has left this little girl in prolonged anguish - the question now is will her graphic suffering be enough to soften the hard lines taken by the hospital.
While Kimorah fights to get the necessary financing to get the shunt replaced, the case has sparked a public war that has been simmering at the KHMH from September of last year. Once a private disagreement between the KHMH administration and neurosurgeons, Dr. Joel Cervantes and Geovanni Lara this morning it spilled into public domain. CEO at the KHMH Alvaro Rosado called in on Krem's WUB and highlighted problems he's been having with the neurosurgeons. He went as far a claiming that they are taking money under the table.
