Eight year old Malique Young is a student at Wesley primary school but he's not gone returned to school after the Easter holidays – and that's because he's sick. But not in the way you might expect. Malique doesn't have the flu or bad belly; he's ruptured his kidney and had to remove it. It happened almost a month ago on March 15th - after he fell from a set of bleachers when he went on a class trip at Bird's Isle in Belize City. His mother says he was unsupervised at the time – and was sent walking home. Today, asking to appear off camera, she told us that she saw him coming down the street in visible pain.
Voice of Denique Arnold – Malique Young's Mother
"In the afternoon I was at home and he was crying and pulling his bag through the street. I just asked him what the problem was and he said he was not feeling well. I assumed he just had the stomach flu. So at 2:00 p. m. I got a call that he was in pain and he was urinating blood and blood clots. So we went to do the ultrasound. After the ultrasound it was requested that we do a CT Scan. After doing both of them it was shown in the results that the Kidney was split in two so he had to go into an emergency surgery that same night. One of the kidneys had to be removed."
Reporter
"How is Malique doing now?"
Voice of Denique Arnold
"He is doing okay. He can't really move a lot. He's a person that likes to dance and does different things and if he moves a lot and dances, he will throw up. I am just upset at the fact that out of all the teachers no one reported the incident to me to at least inform me that the child fell or something. If they were taken on a school trip then they should have been monitored properly. At least when the child fell I could have been notified then I would have known what to do. If he had not urinated then I wouldn't have known the Kidney was split then he would have died because he had internal bleeding from the fact that he fell and the fact that he walked from Bird's Isle to school caused more damage to the Kidney. Right now Malique is without a Kidney and I wouldn't wish that on any child at the age of 8."
Malique continues to have back pain and has not returned to school. She says she hasn't gotten any response from the Ministry or the school - after writing to both.
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