Hong Kong father's anguish after inquest rules teen died of natural causes
A coroner's inquest has ruled that a 14-year-old girl died of natural causes after developing acute myocarditis in Hong Kong three years ago, despite her father's insistence that her death was linked to coronavirus vaccinations.
The girl's father, Tai Shun-keung, called Friday's ruling 'unacceptable', stating that the incident had torn his family apart and led him to depression.
A five-member jury at the Coroner's Court delivered a unanimous verdict on Friday, following a three-day inquiry, that Tai Yee-ting died of natural causes at Caritas Medical Centre in Cheung Sha Wan in May 2022.
The inquest specifically investigated whether her death was related to the two BioNTech coronavirus vaccine doses she received during the Covid-19 pandemic. She had her first jab in January 2022 and the second in April of the same year.
Yee-ting felt tired and vomited before she was taken to see a private doctor on May 5, 2022. She presented with symptoms such as fatigue, loss of appetite and a low fever.
The doctor diagnosed her as having gastroenteritis and prescribed medication.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
8 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Appendicitis surgery blunder puts spotlight on Hong Kong public hospital safety
A recent surgical blunder involving a doctor mistakenly removing a patient's fallopian tube instead of her appendix has cast doubt on Hong Kong public hospitals' ability to effectively implement safety protocols and allocate manpower, advocates have said. Caritas Medical Centre revealed the blunder on Friday, which began with a 48-year-old woman being admitted for appendicitis last Tuesday. A higher surgical trainee performed a laparoscopic appendectomy on the patient the next day but wrongly removed her fallopian tube after misidentifying the organ, an error attributed to 'tissue adhesion near the surgical site', according to the public hospital. The mistake was only discovered five days later, on Monday, after the patient's condition failed to improve and a pathology report on Wednesday confirmed the wrong organ had been excised, forcing her to undergo a second operation. The hospital apologised for the incident and requested its department of surgery to undergo a review of its staffing deployment, supervision and coaching, among other aspects. Alex Lam Chi-yau, chairman of patient advocacy group Hong Kong Patients' Voices, described the incident as 'extremely serious' and a throwback to another case in March last year in which a woman's uterus had been wrongly removed due to mishandled lab samples. The Hospital Authority said in March that it would adopt six measures after a series of medical blunders last year. They included building a database to log patients' post-operation wounds.
South China Morning Post
16 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
How to age well? Specialist in healthy ageing gives his tips on adding life to your years
He did not win the US$250,000 prize, but Jed Ray Gengoba Montayre was one of 10 finalists out of 100,000 candidates for the 2025 Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award. The award recognises outstanding contributions to the nursing field. Montayre, a gerontologist – or healthy ageing specialist – and associate professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University's School of Nursing, was considered for the award for his groundbreaking research. He has spent half his life doing research on ageing, from how to counter loneliness to interventions for cognitive impairment. He has pioneered innovative care models for older people and worked on World Health Organization projects. He is also currently writing a book on how to age well. To help others age well, Montayre promotes maintaining social connections and building healthy habits like exercising. Photo: Shutterstock With all this under his belt, one might expect Montayre to be long in the tooth himself, but he is just 38. Montayre has been a keen learner since his childhood in the Philippine province of Cebu.
South China Morning Post
17 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong restaurant run by disabled looking for new partner to keep mission going
Hong Kong's social enterprises empowering vulnerable communities are struggling to survive amid a dire economy. In the first of a two-part series, the Post looks at how a Singapore-based catering business is trying to chart a new path forward for its disabled workers. Dignity Kitchen, a beacon of hope for disabled people seeking training and employment in Hong Kong, is at a crossroads. The Singapore-based social enterprise restaurant is urgently looking for a local partner because its founder, Koh Seng Choon, can no longer fly often to the city to manage the business after undergoing heart surgery in March. Over the past six years, the 66-year-old travelled from the city state to Hong Kong every two months to set up and run the hawker-style restaurant in Mong Kok that has so far trained and placed more than 200 disabled people in jobs. 'The only thing I regret now is I don't have the health to carry on,' he told the Post earlier this week, three months after his surgery. 'I'm not selling the business. The idea is to find a partner with a good heart, commitment, and experience working with disabled people, letting Hongkongers help Hongkongers.'
