Montreal family upset after Lakeshore Hospital puts COVID patient in same room as ailing grandmother
You can hear the sadness in Mubeenah Mughal’s voice when she talks about her 92-year-old grandmother, Rasool Bibi-Lasania, who tested positive for COVID-19 Thursday.
Bibi-Lasania has been at the Lakeshore General Hospital in Montreal’s West Island since March 23.
On Wednesday, her family says they discovered another patient infected with COVID had spent at least three days in the same room that she is in.
“You’ve lived your whole life to be cared for, especially at the end of your life,” said Mughal. “It would be nice that people are given respect.”
Maimoona Lasania, Mughal’s mother and Bibi-Lasiana’s daughter, is also worried and frustrated.
Lasania says she discovered a patient showing symptoms of COVID-19 had been moved into her mother’s room when she went to visit her in the hospital Wednesday.
She says she asked both an orderly and the daughter of the other patient about the man’s illness, and both of them told her he had tested positive for the virus.
This morning, Lasania got the phone call she was dreading from the hospital.
“This morning I found out she tested positive. Yesterday she was negative. But this man was there for the last three days,” she said.
“My mom is there for something else, and now she’s going to have, this on top of that.”
Lasania says when she arrived in her mother’s room Wednesday, she saw right away that the other patient was in rough shape.
“The room was very messy,” she said. “He was throwing up.”
Rooms ‘rigorously’ cleaned, says health authority
In a statement to CBC, the West Island regional health authority said it can’t comment on specific cases, citing patient confidentiality.
“The situation is evolving rapidly and our teams are working hard while respecting the measures related to the management and prevention of infections, including two-metre distancing and the reduction of visit,” the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal said in its statement.
The health authority would not explain how a patient with COVID-19 had been put in the same room as a 92-year-old woman who didn’t have the virus, but it said the hospital tries to separate positive cases as soon as possible, to limit transmission.
Hospital rooms are “rigorously” cleaned, it said, and the hospital uses air purifiers to ventilate rooms after patients are moved.
But Lasania says when she left the hospital Wednesday night, 30 minutes after the patient was moved to another room, his belongings had been removed but the room still hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned.
Mughal wonders how something like this could happen, two years into the pandemic.
“They should know better,” she said.
“Why are they putting COVID-positive people with COVID-negative people, especially people who are fighting for their lives?”
Both Mughal and her mother say they hope they’ll get the chance to see Bibi-Lasania again before it’s too late.
“As a family, we’re worried for her well-being,” said Lasania.
