Not even open windows can prevent heat stroke, says trauma consultant

A six-year-old girl in Kota Kinabalu was yesterday spared the fate of the three-year-old toddler who died of a heat-stroke after being accidentally left in the car by her mother for more than five hours at a parking lot of a school in Subang Jaya, last Thursday. The girl's mother had left her sleeping in the locked car with the engine on and gone shopping. Luckily passersby managed to save the girl by shaking the car for almost half an hour before she woke up and unlocked the door. According to Dr Ahmad Mahyuddin Mohamed, Orthopedic and Traumatology consultant at Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah Hospital in Temerloh, the internal temperature of a car parked directly under the sun can spike to more than 50 degrees Celsius within 20 minutes and cause heat stroke to any child trapped inside. He said such intense heat would cause the core temperature of a child to rise up to 41 degrees celcius from a normal of 37. "The heat will lead to sweating, dehydration, seizures, brain and organ damage and ultimately death. The victim may also suffocate to death due to lack of air," he said in his blog http://drmahyuddin.blogspot.com. He stressed that there was no guarantee that heat strokes may be prevented with slightly opened windows and leaving the air conditioner on. "Since children have less water in their bodies compared to adults, their temperature will rise faster. We need water to regulate our body temperature," he told Bernama when contacted here. He said heat stroke was a common occurrence worldwide with the United States for example recording 33 deaths last year and 22 so far this year. He advised parents to never leave their children alone in the car, not even for a minute, and be alert to any sleeping kids in the back seat. He urged passersby who spotted any child left alone in a car to immediately call the authorities. "It's also advisable to do a routine check to see if we have taken all our belongings before we leave the car just like when we leave our homes," he added. Car keys should also be kept out of reach of children as there have been cases of kids getting into vehicles without their parents realising it, he said. Last Thursday, Nawal Iris Samsudin, 3, who had fallen asleep on the back seat of the car in the morning, was found by her mother Nor Zatusy Hazwa Abdul Rahim, 32, in a lifeless state when she returned to the car at 5.30 pm.