Indian-Origin Man Dies After Eight-Hour Wait for Care at Canadian Hospital

Prashant Sreekumar, a 44-year-old accountant of Indian origin, began to feel severe chest pain while at work on December 22. Global News, whose report was carried by PTI out of Toronto on December 26, says he was later taken to the Grey Nuns Hospital. The hospital is run by Covenant Health, and the metadata places it in Edmonton. He never saw a doctor before he died.

His father, Kumar Sreekumar, arrived soon after the pain started. Kumar recalls his son telling him, "Papa, I cannot bear the pain." According to Kumar, Prashant described the pain to him and to hospital staff as a 15 out of 10.

Staff performed an electrocardiogram to check his heart function. The family says Prashant was told the result showed nothing of significance and that he should keep waiting. He was also offered Tylenol for the pain.

Then the wait stretched on. Kumar says nurses checked Prashant's blood pressure periodically as the hours passed. "It went up, up, and up," he said. "To me, it was through the roof." In a video circulating on social media, Prashant's wife recounts the ordeal and says his blood pressure reached 210 while he sat in the waiting room. She says he was offered only Tylenol despite describing the pain as unbearable. She also says the family was told that chest pain is not considered an acute problem and that staff did not suspect a cardiac arrest.

More than eight hours went by before Prashant was called into the treatment area. Kumar describes what happened next. After sitting for perhaps ten seconds, Prashant looked at his father, stood up, put his hand on his chest and collapsed. Nurses called for help, but it was too late. The report describes the death as an apparent cardiac arrest.

Prashant leaves behind his wife and three children, aged three, 10 and 14. The family loved to travel together, and they remember him as a "goofball" with his kids. Kumar says people who spoke with his son told him they knew no one better. Family and friends now want to know how a man in severe chest pain could be missed in this way.

Varinder Bhullar, a family friend who used Prashant's accounting services, called the death a huge loss for the community and said he is devastated. "We expect better from the hospital and health-care system," he said.

Covenant Health told Global News by email that it would not comment on the specifics of patient care, citing privacy. It said the case is before the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Its statement offered sympathy to the family and friends and said nothing is more important than the safety and care of patients and staff.

The family says they are trying to remember what Prashant brought them, but will always be haunted by how he died: in pain, in a hospital, without ever seeing a doctor. "They took my baby for nothing. For nothing," Kumar said. The medical examiner's review is the next step, and it is what the family and community are waiting on for answers.