Boy in hostel after hospital declines to admit him
Concern mounted yesterday for the health of domestic helpers crammed into a packed shelter after a two-year-old boy at the shelter caught chicken pox from another resident.
About 30 women were yesterday sleeping in bunk beds crammed into a 500-sq-ft bedroom at Bethune House, with two women to each bed.
The boy is still at the Kowloon centre, set up by the St John's Cathedral-affiliated Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers, after a hospital declined to admit him, saying his condition did not warrant it.
The boy, who caught the disease from an Indonesian helper staying at the centre, developed fever and blisters and was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital on March 28.
Bethune House management sent a letter appealing for the boy to be admitted because of the overcrowding, but doctors at the accident and emergency department turned him away, said Cynthia Tellez, executive director of the mission.
A hospital spokesman said last night that admission was based on the 'clinical condition of the patient and the clinical judgment of the doctor'. A chicken pox patient was admitted only if there was a complication of the disease.
