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.