BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Nov. 10, 2016–It sounds incredible, but a woman who went into the hospital, reportedly for a complaint of sore throat and fever, died three days later and according to her family, after ten days, the hospital has still not performed the mandatory post-mortem to verify the cause of her death.

Deanne Michelle Robinson, 31, a mother of three children ages 14, 9 and 7, died on Monday, October 31, at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH), and her body is still languishing at the morgue.

Her family, who resides in Gardenia, wants to bury her, but the KHMH apparently does not want to conduct an autopsy on her body to certify the cause of her death.

Robinson’s mother, Mildred Crawford, who, along with her second daughter, was present at her eldest daughter’s bed at all times, told Amandala that she saw what happened to her daughter, which made her believe that her daughter is dead due to medical negligence, and the hospital is covering it up.

Despite her request for the results of an autopsy, the devastated mother said that she and her family are being given the run-around.

Crawford has gotten the services of an attorney, Leroy Banner, to help so that an autopsy can be performed so that the body can be released for burial, but to no avail – the KHMH authorities have refused to have the autopsy performed.

Amandala has called the hospital for information. We were told that we had to call the front desk; when we called the front desk, we were not given any information, except that we were advised that the $75 per day morgue fee was mounting daily.

We asked for the matron, but she was “unavailable,” and the Public Relations Officer was on holiday. That information was relayed to us by the PR assistant, who then hung up on us.

The mother and the attorney have now come to the public to help bring pressure on the hospital for the autopsy to be done.

Crawford told us that she was with her daughter on the day that she died. A male nurse came and administered her medicines. She said that the nurse put about five different medicines into the “drip”, and the contents of the “drip” finished quickly.

The nurse, she said, then got a new “drip” and put about five more medicines into it and again, “the drip”, which was flowing into Robinson’s arm, was depleted quickly.
The male nurse then asked her, Crawford, if she had water, said Crawford.

According to Crawford, she told him yes, and he poured a packet of water she gave him (a 25 cents “ideal”) into a tube that went into Robinson’s throat, but she began to gaggle and make distressing sounds.

Crawford said that the nurse then poured some more water, and she began to get worried when she saw how her daughter was responding. She said her daughter’s eyes grew wide, and she began to make a strange sound.

A doctor and a nurse then came in and Crawford said that she was told to leave the room, so she went downstairs and then outside to wait.

After about three hours, when she tried to go upstairs to her daughter, she was stopped, she said.

Shortly after, she and her second daughter were allowed back into the room, and that was when they were told that Deanne had died and was being taken to the morgue.

Crawford told us that she then began to ask questions, and demanded an autopsy, and that was when the push-around began.

Crawford wants to bury her daughter and move on, but she is highly suspicious of why her daughter died.

Today, Crawford told us that she was called to the hospital, and on her arrival, she was given the death certificate without an autopsy being performed.

According to Crawford, when she told a matron what she had seen, the matron said that she was not told that information, and would launch an investigation into the death.

We were also told today that because of the $75 per day morgue fee, which is now running for 10 days now, the family will have to pay $750 before the body can be taken out of the morgue.

The second daughter told us that she thinks that the KHMH wants Deanne be buried without an autopsy so that their negligence cannot be revealed. She said that there is little they can do, because the next move would be to take the body to Chetumal, Mexico, for the autopsy to be carried out, but that would require money, which they do not have.