BABIES AND COMPUTERS

The day the computer killed a baby.

I was knocked down by a motorcycle that morning as I crossed the main road in front of the hospital to enter the premises. I hit my head on the asphalt road and lost consciousness briefly. When I came to, the motorcycle driver had fled and I was surrounded by some nurses who were also coming to work.They sent me to the emergency unit where the medical officer on duty took a look at me . I had sustained minor abrasions and cuts on my arms and face. I also had a small scalp  swelling and my vision  felt blurred, I attributed that to the cracks in my glasses .They had flown off and  hit the road  when the motorcycle sent me flying.

In the end I had to do a CT scan since I had head trauma. I didn’t have the money to pay but since I was a house officer I thought the radiology department will help me out .They did not. They demanded cold hard cash. Hence I was unable to do the scan. I was on duty that morning for pediatric emergencies, I tried to get a colleague to replace me but to no avail. I was not feeling so bad so I decided to do the duty any way. There was no pediatric case at the moment so I left the emergency unit for the doctors room to wait.

Three hours later I was called to come and see a baby in shock from excessive diarrhea and vomiting. I rushed to the emergency, there was the baby, a 3 month old who was breathing very fast. Her eyeballs had retracted deep into their sockets and her skin was as dry as the Sahara desert. She was wailing inconsolably but not even a single tear drop came from her eyes.Those were all bad signs.

 I quickly went to work, secured an iv access and went to the drug cabinet for the emergency looking for normal saline. There was none as usual.The baby needed a bolus  of normal saline immediately so I rushed to the emergency pharmacy at a sprint. I was forced to slow down by an  excruciating pain I felt in my left knee when I started running, possibly from being knocked down earlier in the day. Either way I did not give up and made it to the pharmacy. I quickly pleaded with the drug dispenser to give me one liter of normal saline to sort out an emergency. I did not get any response from him so I made a move to pick the fluids and go but he roared at me not to even dare. He insisted that I had to request it on the HAMS(Health Administration And management System) before he can dispense it whether it was an emergency on not.

I limped back to the ER to get a computer  to make the request. The ER was full to capacity and the nurses and medical officers were busily using the  three computers available, some had queues waiting to use them. A big Yutong  bus had been involved in an accident and the victims had all been rushed to the ER. I heard one nurse murmuring something about the hospital not having enough computers and yet going ‘paperless’ and that they wanted someone to die before they realized their grave mistake. I didn’t want the 3 month old baby to be that sacrificial lamb. I had to do something fast.

The blurred vision which I had attributed to my cracked glasses had worsened when I started running around but I did not bother about it and kept going around frantically begging to use a computer and looking through stuffs for normal saline. I was still searching when the baby’s mum came running with the baby in her arms screaming that she had ceased breathing.The resuscitation team quickly mobilized and started resuscitation protocols but to no avail .The baby was dead.

The mother kept wailing , as such the  father of baby rushed into the ER to see what had happened. I quickly recognized him  as the motorcycle driver who had hit me in the morning and run off. He recognized me as well and quickly run out of the ER leaving his wailing wife and dead baby behind. I would have chased him down but I felt something warm trickling out of my nose. I wiped it with my handkerchief only to see blood. Suddenly the world  went black.

The baby’s dad wanted to sue the hospital for allowing ‘a computer’ to kill his daughter but the hospital administration threatened to sue him for killing a doctor who worked for the hospital with his motorbike. He had no choice but to run away from that idea with his tail between his legs like a cowardly dog running away from the quick brown fox. The hospital did nothing about the ‘computer’ issue in the facility.

It turned out that the baby and I died in vain.

E.Y.