An Enfield couple are planning a legal battle against the Portuguese authorities after their baby suddenly died during a family holiday.
Ten-month-old Adonis Powell Larochelle died on May 19 at the Portimão Hospital in the Algarve.
The Portuguese government insists he received proper treatment, but parents Deza and Paul said the hospital was in “chaos”.
“All I could see is nurses going in and out the room, crying,” said Paul. “One fainted and they had to take her to another room.”
“They were all arguing amongst themselves,” said Deza.
In a tearful interview, the couple said they were left in the hospital’s main corridor for hours, their grief on display to a constant stream of people, before being manhandled into a room and told by a woman in a cleaner’s uniform that Adonis was dead.
When they went to view him, said Deza, he was “already stiff”, leading them to believe he had died long before they were informed, as rigor mortis usually takes two hours to start setting in.
Adonis’s death is now under investigation by the north London coroner’s service.
“We want justice,” said Paul.
Deterioration
Adonis developed a temperature and heavy breathing on Tuesday, May 16, said Deza.
She took him to Portimão Hospital and said she was told he had bronchiolitis – a chest infection common in children under-two.
But by May 19, said Deza, Adonis was “floppy” and his right eye was swollen, so she took him back while Paul stayed at the hotel with their other children.
She claimed staff told her they could not figure out what was wrong with Adonis and tried all different treatments.
This included putting a mask on his face emitting a gas so strong that he immediately began vomiting.
“As soon as they put whatever it was in the mask, he flinched,” she said. “When he flinched I could smell – it was like bleach. They’d encased his whole face in it and I couldn’t even bear to breathe in what was coming out of the top… I’ve never seen so much sick come out of someone so small.”
Deza’s belief is that Adonis inhaled his own vomit and that is what killed him.
“As a mum, I can’t describe the feeling, but I knew he had gone at that point,” she explained.
Delay
But staff rushed Deza out of the room, she said, and left her in a corridor while they called an air ambulance to transport Adonis somewhere else.
Paul arrived while she was waiting. The wait would last hours, they said.
“I’m a Christian and very religious,” said Paul. “All I did is started praying.”
When the helicopter eventually arrived, they watched an ambulance drive Adonis up to the helipad. But minutes later he was driven back down again.
A short while later, they were told Adonis was dead.
The Sindicato dos Técnicos de Emergência Pré-Hospitalar (STEPH - Portugal’s union of pre-hospital emergency technicians) has since raised concerns about Adonis’s “tragic” death.
Union president Rui Lázaro claimed that an ambulance which should have been available to transport Adonis to another hospital “was closed due to lack of a doctor”, hence the wait for a helicopter.
“The closure of ambulances due to lack of professionals has been worsening throughout the national territory, with neither the government nor Instituto Nacional de Emergência Médica (INEM, or national institute of emergency medicine) having expressed any desire to reverse this scourge,” he alleged.
The INEM did not respond to a request for comment.
Unanswered Questions
Deza and Paul said staff rushed them out of the hospital after Adonis’s death, but as they were leaving, one of the team they’d seen working on Adonis asked them to sign a document.
They claimed the staff member told them that if they did not sign it, there would be no autopsy – but they do not know what the document actually was.
Adonis’s autopsy was carried out by one of the staff who worked on him, they alleged, which they believe was “a conflict of interest”.
The couple also said the Portuguese authorities have turned over all resulting documents in Portuguese and refused to have them translated into English.
They requested a second autopsy in the UK, but claimed that when Adonis’s body was returned home, his blood was missing.
Portgual’s Ministry of Health said it had “no knowledge” of these issues, but that all formal requests are responded to.
The Authorities
We put all of Deza and Paul’s allegations to the hospital and the Portuguese Ministry of Health.
The hospital did not respond.
The Ministry of Health said the hospital had already “internally evaluated” Adonis’s case and found “appropriate paediatric care was provided”.
“Unfortunately, the deterioration of the clinical situation could not be reversed,” it said.
But, it added: “As is customary in cases with unfavourable outcomes, further investigations are being conducted by the competent authorities and the Ministry of Health will await their conclusions.”
The Entidade Reguladora da Saúde (Portugal’s health regulation body) confirmed that it had initiated a process to “analyse the situation”.
Deza and Paul have launched a crowd-funding campaign to help fight their legal battle.
They said any leftover funds would be used to set up a foundation to help other parents in similar situations.
“This cannot happen again,” said Deza. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
The fundraising page can be found at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xyj9w-justice-for-adonis
They have also started an Instagram page charting their campaign at @rememberingadonis
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