1. Mum describes “horrific” treatment of her sick baby in NSW hospital, who had a ‘cut-off bottle teat’ sticky-taped to his stomach.
The mother of a child treated at Lismore Base hospital in 2014 has told nine.com.au that hospital staff used “sticky-tape” to treat her infant’s herniated obstructed bowel.
Speaking to the site on condition of anonymity, she described the treatment given to her two-month-old son and her family as “third world”.
The young mother and her partner took their baby boy – who was born premature – to the Lismore Base Hospital’s emergency department in late 2014 when he lacked interest in food and wouldn’t stop crying. They were told his symptoms were “because he’s a premature baby” and were sent home.
By January 2015, a mass on the baby’s belly button had grown from the size of a pea to the size of a cricket ball. The boy’s distraught mum returned to the hospital when the mass started “going purple and green”.
“We were told it was a hernia. They took the baby through when they realised the baby was distraught and when they’d seen the baby’s belly button,” she has told nine.com.au.
“They had to put a bunch of whatever (drugs) they could into him because he was so young and distraught.”
She then claims staff used a “cut-off bottle teat” to push the mass of skin back into her baby’s stomach. She was told to “stand there and hold it” while they discussed further treatment.
The woman explained the cut-off teat was attached to her son’s stomach with “a bit of sticky tape”.
The young family was also told the teat would have to “stay in there” until doctors returned the following day or until they could drive to a different hospital.
Her son was finally admitted to the hospital when the family refused to leave. The mum said she lay awake next to her son for “as many hours as she could” because she “didn’t trust” the staff on duty.
The family then chose to leave after being told their son’s condition was non life-threatening – despite the fact his nappies were full of blood.
“As long as you are breathing you’re fine in that hospital. If you take a turn for the worst, you have no way of surviving. None,” the mother said.
She is now in the process of suing the hospital over her son’s treatment.
The hospital has been in headlines recently after a whistleblower exposed the horrific treatment in the Adult Mental Health Unit that allegedly resulted in the death of Miriam Merten in June, 2014.
2. Two-year-old dies after cardiac arrest at her family home in Brisbane.
A two-year-old girl has tragically passed away in hospital after going into cardiac arrest at her home in Brisbane’s north, the Courier Mail reports.
7 News Queensland reporter Sarah Greenhalgh confirmed the girl had passed away this morning.
Police were called to the home in Northgate around 4:30pm after reports the two-year-old had stopped breathing. Paramedics gave CPR before rushing her to Lady Client Children’s Hospital.
Queensland police confirmed they were investigating the incident to determine what lead to the medical emergency.
They returned to the family home on Thursday night.
3. Yes, a chocolate a day could actually be good for your heart’s health.
Good news! Moderate consumption of chocolate has been linked to a lower risk of developing an irregular heart rhythm that can lead to stroke if untreated, AAP reports.
Research published in the journal Heart found the rate of atrial fibrillation (AF) was lower for people consuming chocolate regularly, compared with individuals reporting chocolate intake less than one 30 gram serve per month, with similar results for men and women.
The association was found to be strongest when women consumed one weekly serving of chocolate and between two to six servings for men.
AF is the most common cardiac rhythm disorder in clinical practice and is independently associated with an increased risk of stroke, heart failure and death.
Symptoms include heart palpitations, fatigue and shortness of breath or breathlessness.
Researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the Duke University Medical Centre analysed data from more than 55,000 participants, aged between 50 and 64, from the population-based Danish Diet, Cancer and Health Study.
Participants provided information on their usual weekly chocolate consumption, with one serving classified as 30 grams, but weren’t asked to specify which type of chocolate they ate.
Information on heart disease risk factors, diet, and lifestyle – roughly one in three smoked – was obtained when the participants were recruited to the study.
Their health was then tracked using national registry data on episodes of hospital treatment and deaths. During the monitoring period, which averaged 13.5 years, 3346 new cases of atrial fibrillation were diagnosed.
After accounting for other factors related to heart disease, the newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation rate was 10 per cent lower for 1-3 servings of chocolate a month than it was for less than one serving a month.
“Despite the fact that most of the chocolate consumed in our sample probably contained relatively low concentrations of the potentially protective ingredients, we still observed a robust statistically significant association,” the authors wrote.
While no firm conclusions can be made about the cause for the association, the authors suggest that “dark chocolate may be a healthy snack option” that helps to prevent the development of AF.
However, doctors from the Duke Centre for Atrial Fibrillation in North Carolina have urged caution, highlighting that the chocolate eaters in the study were healthier and more highly educated – factors associated with better general health – which might have influenced the findings.
4. Body found in stormwater drain in central Queensland.
A body has been found in a stormwater drain in central Queensland, AAP reports.
Detective Acting Inspector Luke Peachey said local businesses had on Thursday morning noticed a foul smell coming from the drain on Gladstone Benaraby Road in Toolooa, just south of Gladstone.
They called the local council but engineers couldn’t flush out the pipe and a fibre optic camera located the human body.
Det Insp Peachey said it was still too early to tell if the remains are male or female, or the cause of death.
He said it had most likely been there for at least a week and it could have washed down from other waterways.
“At the moment we’re just trying to establish that,” he said.
“We’ve got council engineers here at the moment and hopefully they’ll give us a clearer idea of where this person may have come from.”
Council engineers and police are still working to extract the body from the drain, and may have to cut the road up.
Det Insp Peachey said a decision should be made on Thursday afternoon.
5. President Trump’s controversial Muslim travel ban has been dealt another crushing blow.
In a stinging rebuke to President Donald Trump, a US Appeals Court has refused to reinstate his temporary travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations, delivering another blow to the White House in a legal battle likely headed to the Supreme Court.
The decision, written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, described Trump’s executive order in forceful terms, saying it uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”
In a 10-3 ruling, a majority of judges on the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said that the challengers to the ban -who included refugee groups and individuals – were likely to succeed on their claim that Trump’s order violates the US Constitution’s bar on favouring one religion over another.
Citing statements by Trump during his presidential election campaign calling for a “Muslim ban,” Gregory wrote that a reasonable observer would likely conclude that the order’s “primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs.”
The appeals court was reviewing a March ruling by Maryland-based federal judge Theodore Chuang that blocked part of Trump’s March 6 executive order barring people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government put in place stricter visa screening.
A similar ruling against Trump’s policy from a Hawaii-based federal judge is still in place and the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals court is reviewing that decision.
The Trump administration has argued that the temporary travel ban is a national security measure aimed at preventing Islamist militant attacks.
The March ban was Trump’s second effort to implement travel restrictions through an executive order. The first, issued on January 27 just a week after the Republican president took office, led to chaos and protests at airports before it was blocked by courts.
The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16.
The case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which would make the final decision.
6. Alleged Bourke St killer to face a Melbourne court today on unrelated charges.
The alleged Bourke Street killer is due to face court on Friday on charges unrelated to the January attack, AAP reports.
Dimitrious “Jimmy” Gargasoulas, 27, is expected to appear on Friday for a mention hearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.
He is facing six charges of homicide and 29 counts of attempted murder over the Bourke Street incident in January, when he allegedly drove through the Melbourne CBD also injuring dozens of others.
When Gargasoulas last appeared in court via videolink in April on the unrelated charges, he claimed he was “not guilty” on those counts and that he was “the saviour”.
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