“Death is death regardless… it is destiny,” says Ayman Samir, the father of Mostafa, the first school student to die of the H1N1 virus. Samir says he still doesn’t know how his son died – whether it was from flu complications, or because the hospital wasn’t properly equipped.
“Mostafa woke up at 7 AM on Wednesday to go to school, but his mother found that his temperature was 37.3ºC and she decided not to send him to school,” continues Samir. “She took him to a doctor who said he was suffering from a sore throat and otitis media.” Although Mostafa was given medication, his temperature continued to rise until it reached 42.5ºC, so his mother used ice packs to cool his body down, to no avail.
“My wife called me at work to tell me what was happening. When I came back home I found him shivering. So I called the doctor several times, but he didn’t answer,” Samir narrates. “I took my child to another doctor who gave him a voltaren shot to lower his body temperature. But his condition continued to deteriorate, and he was taken to the fever hospital.”
At the fever hospital the child was examined and a throat swab taken which showed that he was suffering from internal hemorrhaging as well as bleeding from the nose and mouth. “The doctors took a blood sample which showed he needed a blood transfusion. Finding blood bags for his group was difficult,” adds the father. Hours passed but the doctors were still unable to determine the causes of bleeding, and an ambulance took Mostafa to Dar el-Hekma Hopsital in Nasr City.
At Dar el-Hekma Hospital, the doctors said that the boy had suffered from a brain hemorrhage, with edema and death of the brain stem cells. On Friday afternoon the central labs of the Ministry of Health stated that the boy had the H1N1 virus. Because Dar el-Hekma isn’t equipped to receive H1N1 cases, Mostafa was rushed to the Day Surgeries Hospital where he passed away on early Saturday.
Translated form the Arabic Edition.
