The father of a four-year-old Hong Kong girl has called for an independent investigation after accusing public hospital staff of forcefully pressing his daughter’s face down while performing stitches for a head wound that left her in a cardiac arrest. Lai Sum-yuet was found unconscious and her heart had stopped after receiving three stitches in a three-minute procedure at Yan Chai Hospital in Tsuen Wan on May 25. She is currently in a critical condition with brain damage and has to rely on ventilatory and life support in the paediatric intensive care unit at Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung.
Meeting the press a day before Father’s Day, her father who only gave his name as Lai, accused medical staff of pressing Sum-yuet’s downwards face on a pillow during the procedure which caused suffocation. “Just like that, they have destroyed my beautiful family. It feels like my heart has been stabbed with a knife and bleeds every day,” he said on Saturday.
Lai and lawmaker Joephy Chan Wing-yan had urged the Hospital Authority and Yan Chai Hospital to set up a committee consisting of experts and specialists from other hospitals to conduct an independent investigation, and look into what caused the girl’s heart to stop and the asphyxiation. The father, who was accompanying his daughter during the procedure, said her head was facing the right side at first, but as she kept struggling, a medical staff used two hands to press her face down and forcefully secured her head..
