In the 21 hours before eight-year-old Amrita Varshini Lanka died in Melbourne, her parents experienced what felt like two “completely contrasting hospitals”.
There was the Monash children’s hospital in which they say Amrita’s difficulty breathing and her mother Satya Lanka’s pleas for more urgent care went unheeded. Then there was the Monash children’s hospital in which, 17 hours after she was first admitted, staff moved Amrita into a short-stay room in preparation to discharge her – only to realise her condition was critical.
