/ 19 March 2007

Boy in freak near-drowning dies in hospital

An eight-year-old boy who nearly drowned when his arm was stuck for more than two hours in an intake pipe in a public swimming pool in Pretoria has died, paramedics said on Monday.

Halaletsang Nkome was swimming at the Danville municipal pool in Pretoria with his cousins when his arm was sucked into the pipe on Sunday afternoon.

For almost 30 minutes, Hansie Diffenthal (21), a former life guard at the pool, kept the boy alive through mouth-to-mouth transfer of air while other children and their parents used buckets to try to lower the water level in the pool.

Paramedics and the fire brigade arrived and managed to wiggle the boy’s arm out of the pipe. He was then transported to Kalafong Hospital after he was stabilised.

”We were deeply shocked when we heard he had passed. He looked stable yesterday [Sunday] when we left him at the hospital,” said ER24 spokesperson Werner Vermaak.

He said he had heard from the boy’s father that Halaletsang had died.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) expressed and sadness at Halaletsang’s death, and said possible negligence should be investigated.

”There needs to be a full investigation as to whether there was any medical negligence that led to his death,” DA Gauteng health spokesperson Jack Bloom said in a statement.

He said there were unexplained questions regarding Halaletsang’s treatment at Kalafong hospital as he was breathing on his own when he arrived at the hospital, but later died of respiratory distress.

Vermaak said Halaletsang had been stable when he arrived at the hospital. ”So far we don’t know the cause of death; everything is sketchy. We are still trying to get information from the hospital,” he said.

The boy was given Panado syrup as medication on arrival at Kalafong. Vermaak said this was standard treatment.

Attempts to get comment from Kalafong Hospital were unsuccessful.