WASHINGTON — A spokeswoman for Thomas Eric Duncan’s family said Friday they may sue Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas for its treatment of Duncan, who died of Ebola on Wednesday.
Saymendy Lloyd also said that Duncan’s 19-year-old son, Karsiah, has been indefinitely barred from Angelo State University, where he attends college. University officials denied that, saying he could return whenever he likes.
Lloyd, speaking with reporters in Washington, said the family may sue the hospital when they finish mourning.
“At the moment they are in a grieving process,” she said.
The family’s complaint stems from Duncan’s being sent home the first time he sought treatment at Presbyterian. Hospital records show he had a fever and abdominal pain and told medical personnel he had recently arrived from Liberia.
“They should have done something better than sending him home,” Lloyd said. “There was no explanation at all of why they were sending him home with a 103-degree temperature.”
Lloyd asserted that Presbyterian did not administer the experimental drug brincidofovir until Duncan supporters inundated the hospital with calls.
“That’s what we had to do. We had a phone chain — ‘Treat Eric Duncan, treat Eric Duncan’ — and that’s when he got the experimental drug,” she said.
Doctors started giving Duncan the drug on Oct. 4. Presbyterian Hospital said after Duncan’s death it administered the drug after consulting with experts across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. The hospital said the drug was administered as soon as his condition warranted it, and as soon as it could be obtained. He was the first Ebola patient to receive brincidofovir.
Confusion on consent
Lloyd blamed the delay on confusion over whether Presbyterian had received his family’s consent. But she noted that doctors put Duncan on dialysis without consulting his family.
“You cannot make a decision to give him medication, but you can make a decision to put him on dialysis? After you have experimented and had him lay there without any medication and his organs are dying away,” she said.
Duncan’s son Karsiah was in Dallas on Tuesday and tried to see his father without success. Lloyd said hospital officials would not let Karsiah see his father because his name was not on the list of approved visitors.
He never came in contact with his father, who died in the next day.
“He received the death news about his father, and then not even an hour later got a call from the president of the university that he was no longer welcome,” Lloyd said, asserting that Angelo State president Brian May told him that “students on campus are very concerned and the university is very concerned. And they’re asking him not to come back.”
‘Wants to be back’
Lloyd would not discuss Duncan’s whereabouts, saying only that “he really wants to be back in school.”
“His mother is locked up, he cannot see her. His brothers and sisters, he cannot see them. He is the only one of his family members that is not forced to be in isolation,” she said.
School officials denied any ban.
“Karsiah is not barred from returning to Angelo State University,” said spokeswoman Becky Brackin.
http://www.dallasnews.com/ebola/headlines/20141010-lawsuit-may-be-coming-in-ebola-victim-s-death-family-friend-says.ece
