Azerbaijani journalist blames doctors for untimely death of father

Azerbaijani journalist Seymour Kazimov wrote on his Facebook page about events that preceded the recent death of his father.  

Kazimov directly accused the state structure responsible for the fight against coronavirus in Azerbaijan of negligence and irresponsibility.

The journalist has demanded a response from the head of this structure, Ramin Bayramli.  So far, no official response has been received.

Open letter

Dear Ramin Bayramli!  As a journalist, I could send you a dry information request with questions. But I decided to send a letter with questions on behalf of the average Azerbaijani.

The state of healthcare in Azerbaijan is well known even to those who write letters praising this system.  […] My father has become another recent victim of this system.

He suffered from high fever for 10 days, but never received adequate medical attention.

The emergency medical service responded: “No, no, no, if it’s fever, we won’t come.  Call the TƏBİB [coronavirus] hotline.”

We called there many times. They didn’t answer for a long time, and when they answered and heard about his temperature, they asked if they had done a test [for coronavirus].

There was no test, and we were told that they would come to do it. Several days passed, but no one arrived.

His temperature continued to rise, and we started calling directly to the center [the structure that is responsible for the fight against coronavirus in Azerbaijan].

They promised that they would come – but no one came.  We started treating my father ourselves. Then the doctor arrived, gave a person with a high fever an injection of diphenhydramine-analginum, and left.

The temperature continued to rise, and we decided to do an X-ray on our own. My father had bilateral pneumonia.

The proceedings continued.  Two more doctors came one after another, and again only received injections of demidrol, no more treatment.

The test was finally taken – four days before his death.

Over those four days, his temperature rose above 39. My father suffered from diabetes and his blood sugar levels rose dramatically.  The ambulance still refused to come, they said that they needed the test result, since they were not given protective clothing from the virus.

The doctor was called again. This time he didn’t come at all, but on the phone he said “We still won’t take him to any hospital, we can only come and give a shot of demidrol.”

And then, the day of his death, June 12. In the morning, the fever and his sugar levels progressed in parallel. The doctor nevertheless arrived – after a scandal. But although he saw the patient’s condition with his own eyes – it all the same ended the same way: a shot of demidrol-analginum and the doctor left.

By noon, the situation worsened; we brought him to the Semashko hospital in a private car. They gave him an x-ray and put him in intensive care.

But after a while they called and offered us to pick him up: because “he still would not survive.”

My father died when we went to pick him up.

Two hours after his death, a negative response to the coronavirus test came.

My questions to the operational headquarters is a question that they don’t hear at the briefings, because independent media are not allowed there.

 1. Are there no people with diseases other than coronavirus in Azerbaijan, or can they not be treated in hospitals?  And is pneumonia the only sign of COVID-19?

 2. Doctors from the operations headquarters say that there are no places in hospitals.  Is my father guilty of the overcrowding?  Or was this the signature of the irresponsible decisions of the operational headquarters?

3. Why are there no places in hospitals?  Who then allowed to open all institutions and allow people to freely go out?

4. Who are the doctors who are part of the operational headquarters, why are their names not disclosed? Indeed, the reason for the overcrowding of hospitals can be found in the illogical decisions made by these people.

5. Why does the test result come in three days? Why don’t they bring tests to the country, the results of which are ready within an hour?  Millions of manat has been collected in the Coronavirus Foundation, so why not spend it?

6. In the hospital, talking with people who have lost their loved ones, I learned that most of them suffered from pneumonia. Pneumonia is one of the main symptoms of coronavirus.  Why are cases of pneumonia suddenly so frequent? How many people died of pneumonia in the summer of 2019?

I can say with full confidence that my father was the victim of negligent health care and irrational decisions made by a group of irresponsible people during a pandemic.

And this applies not only to my father.  On social media, you can find dozens, or maybe hundreds of similar stories.

Therefore, I demand that Ramin Bayramli personally answer my questions, and not some doctors and employees of the center. I simply won’t read the answers signed by someone else.”