Suzanne Hoylaerts Belgium 90 year old woman dies from COVID-19 after coronavirus patient insisted a young person be given use of a vital ventilator instead of her.
A 90-year-old coronavirus patient has died in Belgium after refusing a ventilator and instructing doctors to ‘keep this for the younger’ patients.
Suzanne ‘Bomma Jeanne’ Hoylaerts from Binkom, near Lubbeek, was hospitalized on March 20 when her condition rapidly deteriorated after contracting COVID-19.
The woman’s death comes amid a global shortage of ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic, a key piece of equipment in the battle against the respiratory disease.
Hoylaerts sought medical attention after suffering from a lack of appetite and shortness of breath. She was admitted to hospital where she tested positive for the virus and was placed in isolation, meaning her daughter was unable to visit.
She reportedly told doctors at the hospital: ‘I don’t want to use artificial respiration. Save it for younger patients. I already had a good life.’
Hoylaerts passed away two days after she was hospitalized, on March 22.
Her daughter Judith told Dutch newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws: ‘I can’t say goodbye to her, and I don’t even have a chance to attend her funeral.’
According to Judith, the family were baffled as to how their mother could have contracted the virus as she had stayed at home and was complying carefully with lockdown measures.
Belgium as of Tuesday had recorded 12,775 cases of COVID-19 and 705 deaths. Of those who contracted the deadly bug 4,920 have been hospitalized, including 1,021 who remain in intensive care.
The country’s toll on Tuesday represented a jump of nearly 200 fatalities from that given the previous day, which stood at 513.
The small EU country, with a population of 11.4 million also saw a case of a 12-year-old girl Belgian girl infected with the coronavirus becoming the youngest person in Europe to die from the disease, officials said today.
Ventilators are crucial to helping severely ill coronavirus patients to recover. They are machines which pump oxygen in someone’s lungs when they become unable to breathe on their own.
