Father calls for independent probe after girl, 4, had cardiac arrest in Hong Kong hospital

The father of a four-year-old Hong Kong girl has called for an independent investigation after accusing public hospital staff of forcefully pressing his daughter’s face down while performing stitches for a head wound that left her in a cardiac arrest.

Lai Sum-yuet was found unconscious and her heart had stopped after receiving three stitches in a three-minute procedure at Yan Chai Hospital in Tsuen Wan on May 25.

She is currently in a critical condition with brain damage and has to rely on ventilatory and life support in the paediatric intensive care unit at Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung.

Meeting the press a day before Father’s Day, her father, who only gave his name as Lai, accused medical staff of pressing Sum-yuet downwards on a pillow during the procedure which caused suffocation.

“Just like that, they have destroyed my beautiful family. It feels like my heart has been stabbed with a knife and bleeds every day,” he said on Saturday.

Lai and lawmaker Joephy Chan Wing-yan urged the Hospital Authority and Yan Chai Hospital to set up a committee consisting of experts and specialists from other hospitals to conduct an independent investigation, and look into what caused the girl’s heart to stop and the asphyxiation.