Dying Alone

No Children Should Be Dying Alone, Virus or Not: 


Amanda Platell
Daily Mail

Just over one week ago, 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab was at home with his mum, six brothers and sisters, doing what we’re all doing, watching TV, warding off boredom, isolating at home.

The healthy lad described by his family as ‘a bubble of life’ then started showing coronavirus symptoms. Soon he had difficulty breathing and was raced to King’s College Hospital.

He told ambulance paramedics that when he grew up he wanted to be a vet, as he loved animals. These were Ismail’s last words. The boy with no known health issues was put on a ventilator, induced into a coma, then suffered a cardiac arrest.  He became the youngest fatality of Covid-19 in the UK.

Ismail died at 3am last Monday —without his mum, without his brothers and sisters, without anyone apart from the medical team who, we can be sure, tended him as lovingly as any strangers could.  How unimaginably heartbreaking — for him in his last hours, as well as for his family who desperately wanted to be with him but couldn’t be because of the virus. 

No child should die alone. It is alien to all our instincts.
No child should be without their mother at the end, robbed of her last loving words and with no hand to hold.  Ismail died at 3am last Monday —without his mum, without his brothers and sisters, without anyone apart from the medical team who, we can be sure, tended him as lovingly as any strangers could.

As a family friend said, the fact no one was able to see Ismail compounded the sense of devastation. To make things still worse, it’s emerged that none of Ismail’s family — not his mother Sadiya nor his siblings — will be able to attend the funeral because two of them have developed mild symptoms, so everyone is quarantined at home.

We all understand the importance of isolation rules. But surely there should be allowances. Can’t we show compassion in cases like Ismail’s?  The Marie Curie end-of-life charity says they would like to see close family be able to visit loved ones in hospital, where possible and if it is safe to do so, arguing this is part of our duty of care to patients.

It is vital in this brutal fight against the virus that we retain our sense of humanity.

This does not mean a free for all for visits — it’s clear we need strict policies. But for a mother not to be able to visit a hospital where her son lies dying, strikes me as cruelty.  Surely we can do better — and offer a stricken family the comfort they deserve?

[Denying or rejecting the God-created bond between parents and children, child and siblings is from the Pit.  How we hate the technocratic state, the ultimate deux ex machina of our days. Ed.]