Camden News: Saurav Ghai | £10,000 | Vinay Ghai | Desiree Ghai | Royal Free Hospital | Donation

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Camden News - by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 12 June 2008

Victim Saurav Ghai

Parents of wall tragedy toddler give £10,000 for hospital kids

Royal Free thanks little Saurav’s family for gift that is helping sick children

THE parents of a boy crushed by a collapsed wall have handed £10,000 gift to the hospital which desperately tried to save his life.
City banker Vinay Ghai and his wife Desiree were guests at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead on Friday to see how their donation had been spent.
Their son Saurav was aged two when he was covered by falling bricks in Southampton Road, Gospel Oak, during ferocious storms. He was taken to the hospital in Pond Street in January last year but could not be saved.
The family’s donation has already been spent on emergency equipment including a “dash monitor”, used to check oxygen and heart rate levels among critical patients.
The hospital has also used the money to buy a mannequin known as a “Megacode Kid”, which medics will use to practise skills needed for real-life emergency situations.
Saurav’s parents and their six-year-old son, who live in Belsize Park, were taken around the hospital by chief executive Andrew Way and chairwoman Pam Chesters.
Mr Way said: “We are grateful for this gift. Although the trust has a turnover of £450 million a year, we can never buy everything we’d like to have. Thanks to this donation, this equipment will help us to treat seriously ill children now and for the future.
The couple declined to comment on the donation. After an inquest into Saurav’s death, they said: “We will put into our minds now to preserving the wonderful memories our son gave us, our family and friends.”
The Royal Free’s Dr Kerrie Whitwell said: “The mannequin is used for training purposes which enables our doctors and nurses to manage seriously injured and unwell children. The monitor has enabled us to upgrade one of our paediatric cubicles to a high-dependency area where sick children can be monitored closely.”
An inquest into Saurav’s death heard details about how the boundary wall of the Wendling estate, had been stitched together with lightweight bolts during repair jobs and stuffed with plastic bags.
Standards were monitored by the contractor carrying out the work, who has since vanished and evaded searches by police and the Health and Safety Executive.
The wall had passed an inspection by surveyors hired by the council months before the tragedy but the inquest heard it would have been impossible to tell whether there were internal faults from a simple visual inspection.

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