A for­mer sus­pect­ed COVID-19 pa­tient of the Cau­ra Health Fa­cil­i­ty has de­scribed her ex­pe­ri­ence there as “trau­mat­ic, de­press­ing and frus­trat­ing.” She claimed staff did not have enough per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) and pa­tients were giv­en one dis­pos­able face mask which they had to wash and reuse every day.

The woman said she was al­so kept in a space with some­one who ex­hib­it­ed men­tal health symp­tons, defe­cat­ed on the floor and smeared it every­where. She had to eat and sleep in the room where all of this hap­pened.

Sasha Su­per­sad gave these de­tails in an af­fi­davit filed in a mat­ter against At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, in which she is seek­ing dam­ages over her treat­ment while at the fa­cil­i­ty for ten days. The law­suit was filed by at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan on Fri­day.

Ram­sa­roop said on March 30 at 7.30 am she pre­sent­ed her­self to be neb­u­lised at the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty. She is an asth­ma pa­tient and did not have the med­ica­tion for her neb­u­lis­er and felt it nec­es­sary to vis­it the health fa­cil­i­ty.

Af­ter be­ing neb­u­lised, Su­per­sad said her breath­ing im­proved. She was then sent for a chest x-ray in a dif­fer­ent de­part­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the af­fi­davit, af­ter the x-ray, Su­per­sad was sent to the neub­li­sa­tion tent in the carpark of the fa­cil­i­ty. She said there were sev­er­al oth­er pa­tients there. Some had flu-like symp­toms, the area was crowd­ed and there were few doc­tors and nurs­es present.

It was not the first time she had gone to the fa­cil­i­ty to be treat­ed and in the past she said she would be dis­charged. This time that did not hap­pen.

Ac­cord­ing to Su­per­sad, nine hours af­ter she first went to the fa­cil­i­ty, at around 4.30 pm, two fe­male doc­tors told her she would be swabbed for COVID-19. She ques­tioned the de­ci­sion since she said she had no flu-like symp­toms, had not trav­elled or been in con­tact with any­one with a trav­el his­to­ry and had been do­ing every­thing the min­istry asked in terms of so­cial dis­tanc­ing and iso­la­tion.

She claimed al­most two hours af­ter the swab was tak­en, an­oth­er doc­tor told her she would be tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, to be ex­am­ined by a chest spe­cial­ist.

She was shut­tled to the fa­cil­i­ty and got there at 7.30 pm, 12 hours af­ter she first went to the Ari­ma fa­cil­i­ty. She said her rel­a­tives were not in­formed that she had been sent to Mt Hope and on­ly found out when her sis­ter called to in­quire about her.

Ac­cord­ing to Su­per­sad’s af­fi­davit, at the EWM­SC she was placed in an iso­la­tion room with more than six peo­ple. She claimed that some of the peo­ple were cough­ing and she was scared of be­ing ex­posed to COVID-19.

Tired af­ter her more than 12-hour or­deal, she asked a nurse to use an emp­ty room with a stretch­er which she sani­tised with wet wipes. She said she had to use a wash­room, used by both males and fe­males, the con­di­tion of the which she de­scribed as dis­gust­ing.

“There was no toi­let pa­per. A roll of Boun­ty pa­per tow­els was on the dirty floor and this is what pa­tients were forced to use as a sub­sti­tute for toi­let pa­per,” she said in her claim.

Su­per­sad said the toi­let bowl was al­so clogged and could not be flushed.

“The smell was un­bear­able,” she said, adding she want­ed to vom­it but held back.

When she put her hand in­side the card­board cylin­der she re­alised what “the pa­per tow­els were wrapped around was dirty and had rem­nants of hu­man fae­ces. My hands got dirty as I had to in­sert my fin­gers in­side to pull on the pa­per tow­els to tear them out to use.”

Su­per­sad’s af­fi­davit al­so claimed there was no soap or hand sani­tis­er avail­able, in breach of the min­istry’s own guide­lines to fre­quent­ly wash your hands to pre­vent the spread of the virus.

The next day she was told she could not leave the iso­la­tion area or have a show­er since there were no fa­cil­i­ties and “at this point I felt ex­haust­ed, de­pressed and frus­trat­ed. I broke down in tears as these were not the con­di­tions I was ac­cus­tomed to.”

On April 1, Su­per­sad said a man in a haz­mat suit came and told her she was be­ing moved to the Cau­ra Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

“I was again shocked by this since ab­solute­ly no med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion was done on me at the EWM­SC,” she said.

At Cau­ra, Su­per­sad said she was put in a room with oth­er pa­tients and as­signed to a bed on Ward 7. She claims she was put “in a quar­an­tine ward with po­ten­tial COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients await­ing their re­sults.”

On April 2, Su­per­sad said she was con­tact­ed by the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Lal­lo, who told her she had test­ed neg­a­tive for COVID-19. But she was not al­lowed to go home, nor was she giv­en a copy of her test re­sults which she re­quest­ed.

On April 3, five days af­ter her or­deal start­ed, her neg­a­tive re­sult was con­firmed by a Dr Fred­er­icks. She asked again to go home and was re­fused.

On April 5, Su­per­sad said she was swabbed “a sec­ond time this time by a Dr Ja­cobs. I was in­formed my re­sults would be back with­in 48 hours.”

On April 7, she said she was told by an­oth­er pa­tient, whom she named, that she would have to be “re-swabbed since my sec­ond swab could not read out.”

“I was fu­ri­ous since my pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty was breached,” she said.

That same evening, a pa­tient ex­hibit­ing what ap­peared to be men­tal health symp­toms was placed in the cu­bi­cle.

“Af­ter hav­ing din­ner, she defe­cat­ed all over the floor and smeared it every­where. The stench of the fae­ces per­me­at­ed the ward and I could not sleep. At that time there were about 19 of us on the ward.”

She said she and oth­er pa­tients told the nurs­ing staff about the sit­u­a­tion but “the nurs­es said that was not their job.”

Of­fers from the pa­tients to as­sist with clean­ing up the mess were re­fused.

“I was forced to eat and sleep in the fae­ces-smeared room,” she said and fur­ther claimed in the af­fi­davit that the mess was “not cleaned un­til 14 hours lat­er on the morn­ing of April 8.”

On the morn­ing of April 8, a nurse at­tempt­ed to give her med­ica­tion. She said she re­fused and the nurse sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised and told her the med­ica­tion was re­al­ly for a para­plegic pa­tient.

The next day, frus­trat­ed and de­pressed by what she had been through, Su­per­sad start­ed to ex­plore her le­gal op­tions. Her fa­ther re­tained at­tor­ney Om Lal­la, who sent a let­ter to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer on her be­half. How­ev­er, she was re­leased the next day.

Ac­cord­ing to Su­per­sad’s af­fi­davit, less than 12 hours af­ter the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was sent “at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7 pm on April 9, a doc­tor by the name of Dr Pul­chan called me on my cell phone to in­form me that the read­ing from my sec­ond swab, which was ini­tial­ly read as in­con­sis­tent, was retest­ed and came back neg­a­tive, hence I was free to go home.”

She said the ex­pe­ri­ence was “hu­mil­i­at­ing and de­grad­ing” and the con­di­tions were less than ide­al.

“There was un­avoid­able open mix­ing of pa­tients, since pa­tients who were wait­ing on test re­sults and pa­tients who al­ready test­ed pos­i­tive had to use the same toi­let and bath­room fa­cil­i­ties which was cleaned once every 24 hours.”

She is, there­fore, now seek­ing le­gal re­dress for un­law­ful de­ten­tion at the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty, the EWM­SC and Cau­ra Health Fa­cil­i­ty.