Ali­cia Llanos

A pri­vate au­top­sy has con­firmed that busi­ness­woman Tri­cia Seu­raj died from haem­or­rhag­ic fever. This was dis­closed yes­ter­day by a close rel­a­tive. The rel­a­tive, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said Seu­raj's fam­i­ly re­tained pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon de Vi­gnes to con­duct a pri­vate au­top­sy which con­firmed she died as a re­sult of or­gan fail­ure caused by haem­or­rhag­ic dengue. De Vi­gnes said he per­formed the au­top­sy on Seu­raj af­ter a per­son­al re­quest from her fam­i­ly but did not want to dis­close his find­ings.

The Min­istry of Health has not yet con­firmed dengue as be­ing the cause of her death. Ac­cord­ing to her physi­cian Dr Ah­mad Ra­ha­mon, who spoke at press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre, St Clair, Seu­raj came to him last Fri­day show­ing symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with dengue. Ra­ha­mon said he or­dered blood tests and gave Seu­raj ap­pro­pri­ate med­ica­tion. He said he was con­tact­ed by Seu­raj's hus­band on Sun­day who in­formed him her con­di­tion had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. Ra­ha­mon said he told him to take her to the St Clair Med­ical's emer­gency ward, where he met them. He said up­on his ar­rival Seu­raj's vi­tals re­mained sta­ble, but just two to three hours lat­er her con­di­tion wors­ened. Ra­ha­mon said Seu­raj suc­cumbed to the ill­ness, which was sus­pect­ed dengue, at 10.30 am Mon­day at the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

He said be­fore her death blood sam­ples were tak­en to test for dengue but added on­ly the Min­istry of Health could con­firm dengue as the cause of death. Mean­while, at the news con­fer­ence chair­man of Med­corp Lim­it­ed, Dr Kong­shiek Achong Low, said St Clair Med­ical com­plied with min­istry's reg­u­la­tions in re­port­ing a case of sus­pect­ed dengue and de­liv­ered the re­port to the min­istry on Tues­day. He was re­spond­ing to a news brief­ing on Tues­day at which Health Min­is­ter Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said St Clair Med­ical did not re­port the sus­pect­ed dengue death of Seu­raj to the min­istry.

Achong Low added: "St Clair Med­ical did com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions as ex­pressed by the Min­istry of Health." He said Seu­raj died on Mon­day and the re­port was sub­mit­ted to the min­istry on Tues­day at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1 pm, just an hour af­ter the min­is­ter ac­cused the hos­pi­tal of breach­ing min­istry pro­to­col.

Seu­raj was an icon­ic Hart's Car­ni­val band sec­tion-leader. Since her death the band's Face­book page has been flood­ed with trib­utes to her. Her fu­ner­al is set for to­day.