‘You didn’t care enough to help my child.’ Parents want to know what happened at facility as viral outbreak raged – NJ.com

It’s been nearly two months since the first children began dying in the severe viral outbreak at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation. And yet, some parents say they still don’t know what factors may have contributed to the deaths of their children.

Most importantly, some are asking if their child’s death could have been prevented.

On Monday, the state Senate will hold a hearing to try and answer the series of questions that have been raised about how the Haskell facility handled the outbreak of adenovirus, which has claimed the lives of 11 children and infected dozens more.

Tamara Cooper and Dondre Mills Sr., whose 2-year-old son Dondre Mills Jr. died from an adenovirus-related illness on Oct. 23, are one of the families still looking for answers. The parents say the facility delayed sending their child to the hospital, even as he was growing increasingly ill. They also question why the facility did not alert them to the outbreak.

On Oct. 10, Cooper said a nurse from the Wanaque Center contacted her and told her that her son had a 105-degree fever, and that they were giving him Tylenol to bring down his temperature and monitor his condition.

But the child did not get better. He was moved to St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center on Oct. 17.

“By the time he got to St. Joseph’s, his respiration was so bad … So they waited until the last minute to where he could have received something to intervene,” she said. “But you chose to keep him on the unit, and you refused to send him early.”

“You sat there in your facility, you knew what was happening to him and you didn’t care,” she said. “You didn’t care enough to help my child. You didn’t care. And I don’t have peace of mind. And I just feel like he was mistreated.”

Dondre Jr., who died at St. Joseph’s hospital on Oct. 23, had been in the facility’s pediatric unit since January. He had cerebral palsy and epilepsy. The parents also noted that when they would visit their son at the facility, they felt he wasn’t receiving the care he needed, including his diaper not being changed regularly and bedsores on his body.

Workers at the Wanaque Center, who previously spoke to NJ Advance Media on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs, claimed that senior administrators had delayed sending kids to hospitals — even as many started dying — to keep Medicaid funds flowing to the for-profit facility, which would be lost as soon as a child was transferred out.

The Wanaque Center treats medically fragile children who are often in need of round-the-clock care.

Cooper, 25, and Mills, 27, of Paterson, also questioned why the facility didn’t inform them of the outbreak for more than a week while their son was ill. Cooper said she didn’t realize the full extent of the outbreak until seeing news reports after their son’s death.

Their descriptions echo those of other parents of children who died or became severely ill in the outbreak.

One of those parents includes Modaline Auguste, of East Orange, who previously told NJ Advance Media she pleaded for week with the facility to send her daughter to the hospital after she developed what appeared to be a respiratory infection with fevers as high as 104.

She said she had repeatedly asked the facility to send her daughter to the hospital, but to no avail. Finally, on the evening of Oct. 5, Dorcase was transferred to St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson. She died on Oct. 8.

Kristine Deleg, whose 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, died from an adenovirus-related illness in late October, described a similar experience. She said Elizabeth was transferred from the Wanaque Center to a hospital on Oct. 2 after contracting a fever. Deleg, however, said wouldn’t learn of the outbreak until Oct. 22 in a letter from the facility — the same day her daughter ultimately died from her illness.

“It hit me hard … It hit me really hard,” said Deleg, 52, of Ossining, New York.

She added, “I didn’t know what was going on back at the Wanaque Center.”

The Wanaque Center had notified local health department officials on Oct. 9 of a cluster of respiratory illnesses. However, by this time, two girls had already died

Deleg said she doesn’t know why the facility delayed telling parents about the outbreak.

“If they reported it on the ninth, why didn’t they inform us on the ninth then?” Deleg asked.

When news of the outbreaks came out after her daughter’s death, she said she was “heartbroken” and felt she had been misled.

“I was angry,” she said.

Gov. Murphy and state legislators have vowed to find out how the outbreak was handled at the facility.

Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, who chairs the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, has said that “the public needs to know what happened” and that “we have an obligation as a legislature to make sure our infection controls and protocols are as current and effective as possible.”

Those invited to the hearing include the owners of the Wanaque facility, union representatives for the nurses in the facility’s pediatric unit, the state health commissioner and an infection control expert, among others.

The state Senate will also seek to examine how the outbreak unfolded and spread so rapidly and why state health officials waited two weeks after initially learning of the illnesses at the facility before deploying a team to see for themselves how Wanaque was managing the crisis.

Staff writers Susan Livio and Ted Sherman contributed to this report.

Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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