A LIMASSOL family was yesterday plunged into grief as they buried their five-year-old daughter who killed by a falling marble flowerbox in their garden at the weekend.
Sofia Demetriou from Ayios Athanasios died en route to Nicosia general hospital on Sunday afternoon after suffering severe head injuries when a marble flowerbox fell from the balcony on her head, police said.
The youngster died at around 2pm as she was being transported from a private Limassol hospital to the capital, said police. A duty doctor at Nicosia general pronounced her dead on arrival. The accident occurred at around 11am under circumstances being investigated.
Sofia’s parents and a doctor from the Achilleon private hospital have accused Limassol general hospital of huge delays in the child’s treatment. Although the five-year-old was taken to the private facility by her parents, the duty doctors recognised that Sofia’s condition was critical and warranted immediate transfer to Nicosia.
The Achilleon doctor said Limassol general hospital was contacted to send an ambulance to collect the child as its own ambulance did not have the necessary equipment to undertake the journey. The private hospital also requested two units of O negative blood from the hospital’s blood bank. According to the doctor’s claims, it took the state hospital 90 minutes to send an ambulance to collect the child and the blood never arrived.
But Limassol hospital head Chrysostomos Andronikou yesterday refuted the allegations. He said the ambulance had to be prepared to transfer the child because the private hospital had asked for a paediatric respirator.
“While O negative blood is not easily given out without cross reference, we gave instructions that it leave immediately for the good of the case,” he said.
Andronikou also said the hospital had sidestepped procedure and sent the ambulance to collect the child from the private facility. Under normal circumstances, the five-year-old should have been transferred from the private hospital to the general hospital and from there transferred to Nicosia. Andronikou said the private facility had refused to move the child and that under the urgent circumstances the state hospital had ignored protocol and sent its ambulance to collect the child.
According to press reports the driver of the ambulance was a friend of the family and suffered an angina attack on the motorway. The man managed to stop the vehicle and it was driven the rest of the way by a relative who was following the ambulance.
Sofia was buried yesterday afternoon at Ayios Minas Church in Ayios Athanasios.
Limassol CID is investigating the circumstances surrounding her death.
