Email

Print

It is a parent’s worst nightmare: seeing your child engulfed in flames and having to fight desperately to out the fire. Kent Vernon Flowers Sr. will have to live with that horrible sight for the rest of his life. The tragic accident unfolded yesterday at the family’s residence situated in Carmelita Village in the Corozal District. According to the father it happened around three on Monday afternoon when he was fixing his car. As a consequence, nine year old Kent Vernon Flowers suffered burns to eighty percent of his body.

He is in critical condition, and because of that we can’t show you the damage done to the child who is inside the intensive care unit at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Tonight the family and their son’s doctor Cecilio Eck appeal for your help in getting the young boy to Shriner’s Children’s Burn Center in Galveston, Texas. The hospital has already accepted the child, but now the family needs the money air ambulance him to the U.S. His father told us more.

Kent Flowers Sr., Father
“I had my baby beside the car and I had a gas pump in a little container, I was trying the gas pump because I put it into the truck and when I went inside and started it, when I looked through the windshield I saw a big ball of fire.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
“Where was Kent Jr. standing?”

Kent Flowers Sr.,
“Right beside the car and when I looked through the windshield I saw the explosion, flame, and he was trying to out the fire and the gas in the container just throw on him and he started to catch fire.”

Dr. Cecilio Eck, Paediatrician
“Pediatric surgeons at the KHMH were in attendance and we resuscitated him, we put in a central line and gave him fluids but on examination from his neck down, all his skin was completely burnt off. The only place that are spared right now are his face and the groin region and the reason for that is that according to the grandmother on holidays he would walk around in just his underwear and that’s how he was burnt. And when I say all his skin I mean his entire back as well. Only the back of his scalp, completely second and third degree burns which means that his entire skin was burnt off.”

Kent Flowers Sr.,
“I tried to out it and I get burnt myself and after I finished out him, I took a look at my son and it broke my heart into a million pieces.”

Dr. Cecilio Eck,
“You tend to lose a lot of fluids and you become very dehydrated because our skin keeps fluid inside. Without the skin protecting us it opens us up to fluid loss as well as opens our body to infections. He is admitted at the ICU at KHMH and under strict guidelines fro visitors and even for the attending doctors we have to be very careful to not introduce any germs into the environment. We’ve given him antibiotics but he desperately needs to go out to a specialized burn care center to get the treatment to get well.

For burn patients in third world countries the mortality rate is zero. If he does not get out he will die and the reason for that is that the burn unit that he needs to go in, we don’t have.”

Kent Flowers Sr.,
“I would just want to ask the general public if they could help me in whichever way because you never know, it could be your kid. So I ask anybody, whatever you have, anything which would help me right now.”

Dr. Cecilio Eck,
“This morning after reviewing his case and seeing that, again he is lucid, he speaks to you but he is in a lot of pain so you could imagine a burn on your hand from a piece of hot fat. Imagine your entire body feeling like that. So he is in a lot of pain, he was still talking and while we were dressing his wound he was talking and crying to us. So when I came to my office I spoke to Miss Burks from Gift of Life from the Rotary Club and she immediately made her contacts. She spoke with the closest Shriner’s Hospital that deals with burn victims and they have accepted him. I have referred him over the phone to one of the burn specialists, we spent about an hour on the phone going over the details of his case.

The issue we are faced with now is that of getting him there. Miss Burks and her Rotary Program, they are willing to fund the money to get him there but they are pretty low on cash right now and they really need support to get him out.”

The air ambulance service will cost thirty thousand Belize dollars. Like any burn victim it is crucial for him to receive the medical care as soon as possible. If you can assist, contact Yvette Burks at telephone number 610–3890 or you can deposit your financial contributions to the Belize Bank Limited Burn Victim Mercy Fund. That account number is 695–1152-111.