
'Urgent' probe of WA girl's hospital death.
Questions have been raised about whether staff shortages contributed to the death of a young girl forced to wait for care at a Perth hospital.
Seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath died at Perth Children's Hospital on Saturday after spending two hours waiting for treatment in the emergency department.
She had been rushed to hospital with a fever.
Aishwarya's parents told Nine News they had pleaded for their daughter to be seen by doctors after her eyes became cloudy and her hands turned cold.
Aishwarya Aswath’s parents will be forced to wait at least a month before finding out whether Perth Children’s Hospital could have done more to save their little girl. 🔒 https://t.co/YCHRVPwONu pic.twitter.com/G0hCsMP1cv
— The West Australian (@westaustralian) April 6, 2021
She died soon after she was finally seen.
"I went to the reception maybe four or five times and I asked them to have a look at her," Aishwarya's mother Prasitha Sasidharan told Nine News.
"They were actually neglecting us. We pleaded with them to have a look. They didn't think it was an emergency."
The circumstances surrounding Aishwarya's death will be the subject of an internal investigation by the Child and Adolescent Health Service which is expected to take four to six weeks.
CAHS chair Debbie Karasinski has revealed four doctors in the hospital's emergency department were off sick that night.
Aishwarya was triaged as a category four patient, the second-lowest urgency.
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