UAE | General
Father: 'They were all my world... How can I go on?'
"Why did this happen to my children?" Patrick D'Souza asks, his voice cracking at the cherished memories of little Nathan and Chelsea. "They were all my world, now they're gone. How can I go on?"
- By Mick O'Reilly, Deputy Managing Editor
- Published: 22:47 June 24, 2009
- Image Credit: Supplied Picture
- Nathan, 5, and Chelsea, 7, died last week of suspected food poisoning after eating a take-away meal ordered from a restaurant in Al Ghusais.
Dubai: "Why did this happen to my children?" Patrick D'Souza asks, his voice cracking at the cherished memories of little Nathan and Chelsea. "They were all my world, now they're gone. How can I go on?"
It's been 12 days since the D'Souza family's hellish nightmare began, and it started with a phone call placed to the Lotus Garden in Al Ghusais for Chinese food.
Never did the family realise then that for five-year-old Nathan and seven-year-old Chelsea, it would be their last supper.
Hours after eating, Nathan, Chelsea and their mother, Anne-Sophie, were awake with stomach pains, vomiting, and with pains in their limbs.
"At first, my wife suspected it was a stomch flu, but then she became worried and took them to the NMC hospital around the corner," D'Souza recalls.
Ironically, also around the corner from the hospital is the shuttered Baghdad Street restaurant from where the food was ordered.
"The issue here isn't food poisoning," D'Souza asserts, his voice rising in anger. "The issue here is the failure of the hospital staff to properly treat my family for food poisoning."
To date, D'Souza says he has yet to receive a full explanation of what happened from the hospital's point of view.
For him, what happened is painfully etched in his heart: The three were released from hospital after IV fluids were administered. Nathan's condition deteriorated rapidly, and Anne-Sophie returned to the hospital. Nathan died there. Anne-Sophie and Chelsea were transferred to Dubai Hospital, where Chelsea also died.
"They were our life," the heart-broken father says, fighting back tears. "We have lost everything."
Despite the pain of losing both their children, the couple say they are not going to move from Dubai. "This is where our children lived. This is where all our memories of them are. By staying here, we are staying close to those memories. That is all we have now."
When the time is right, the D'Souza's will take their two little angels to France for burial.
The family is still awaiting official results of the cause of their deaths. "The results have been sent abroad for analysis and I haven't heard officially from the authories yet," he says. "It is still being investigated, but we are putting our hopes in the authorities that they will get to the bottom of this terrible tragedy.
"I don't want any other family to go through this," D'Souza vows. "We need to know why the hospital failed to properly diagnose and treat my family.
"A lot of stuff has been written in the media. Most of it is nonsense. What only matters now is why didn't the hospital treat my family properly. If they did, Nathan and Chelsea would be here today."
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