Why Did Two Infants Die While Others Were Only Mildly Affected? Hospital Chief Weighs In
As the deadly daycare incident in Yerushalayim’s Romema neighborhood continues to send shockwaves through the medical community, Dr. Yechiel Schlesinger offered new insight into the puzzling disparity in outcomes among the infants who were exposed.
Speaking Monday evening with journalist Avi Mimran on Kol Chai’s main news program, Dr. Schlesinger, director of the Wilf Children’s Hospital at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, described the critical moments when two infants were rushed to the hospital in extremely grave condition, undergoing advanced resuscitation efforts upon arrival. Despite prolonged attempts, doctors were unable to save one of the infants, while the second remains in critical condition as medical teams fight to stabilize him in intensive care.
Sharing details from inside the emergency room, Dr. Schlesinger said, “Two infants arrived to us while undergoing resuscitation. One infant, sadly, our efforts were unsuccessful and we were forced to pronounce his death quite quickly.” He added that there was a brief glimmer of hope in the second case, after doctors were able to restore a heartbeat. “He is currently hospitalized in our pediatric intensive care unit, in critical condition and receiving intensive treatment,” Schlesinger said, stressing that the child remains in “very real, immediate life-threatening danger.”
The cause of the sudden system collapse among the infants remains unknown. Dr. Schlesinger explained that in such an unusual and severe incident, doctors’ first suspicion is environmental poisoning, including exposure to toxic gases or pesticides. However, early laboratory findings surprised the medical teams. “We checked carbon monoxide levels and they were normal. That rules out poisoning of that type,” he said, adding that tests for pesticide exposure have also not yielded definitive findings. Physicians are now examining other possibilities, including contamination through food or bottles, though Schlesinger cautioned that “it is still far too early to determine” the cause.
While the battle continues to save the critically ill infant, Shaare Zedek also treated approximately 15 additional children who had been present in the same building in Romema. Dr. Schlesinger sought to reassure the public, saying all of those children are considered to be in mild condition. Some showed very slight respiratory symptoms, while others were brought in mainly for evaluation and monitoring. “At this stage, it does not appear that any of them are in danger,” he said, though he emphasized that doctors are proceeding cautiously. “We will keep them under observation overnight to be one hundred percent certain.”
The stark contrast between the two infants who collapsed suddenly and the rest of the children who were only lightly affected has raised troubling questions among medical staff. Dr. Schlesinger said it is not yet clear whether all of the children were exposed to the same trigger, but he outlined several possible explanations for the dramatic difference in severity. “In the infants who were critically ill, there was a sudden and complete collapse. In the others, it was much milder,” he said, suggesting that the most severely affected infants may have been closer to the source of danger, or that their younger age made them significantly more vulnerable and sensitive to whatever caused the incident.
{Matzav.com}
