A major Melbourne health service has admitted to failures in its treatment of a beloved young girl who died in its care two-and-a-half years ago. A coronial inquest into Amrita Lanka's death began today, with the girl's mother levelling grave accusations that Monash Health brushed off legitimate concerns about her daughter's deteriorating condition.
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00:00The bright and bubbly 8-year-old was taken to hospital with a fever and stomach pain
00:07in April 2022. Within 24 hours she was dead. Her parents alleging Monash Health staff missed
00:14warning after warning of the deadly heart condition myocarditis.
00:17If they could put more attention to her, maybe today my Amrita could be sitting next to me.
00:27Amrita Chattarapareddy wept before the coroner today as she relived her daughter's last night alive.
00:32Telling the court, she arrived at the hospital at about 1.30 and waited more than two hours for an abdominal ultrasound.
00:39At about 9 o'clock the 8-year-old complained it was difficult to breathe, but staff allegedly said it was because she had an empty stomach.
00:47It was almost dawn when a monitor showed Amrita's heart racing that staff began investigating myocarditis with an ECG.
00:56Amrita survived an initial cardiac arrest at about 7.30 but died just hours later.
01:02The hospital's overnight clinician, Dr Patrick Tan, told the court his verbal handover for Amrita only flagged suspected appendicitis and gastro-symptoms.
01:12He said he thought abnormal results on some of the tests for Amrita were errors by the time they finally came back.
01:19His employer told the court it accepts there was a failure to appreciate the rapidly progressive nature of this condition
01:25and that test results required that her care be quickly escalated.
01:29It says it's trained staff to pick up on the extremely rare but devastating condition since the girl's death.