A young girl named Victoria Olabode, who was 12 years old, passed away from a stroke that might have been prevented. Her mom, Elizabeth, had asked doctors many times over three days for a special kind of picture of Victoria’s brain, called a CT scan, because Victoria was having really bad headaches and throwing up.

Victoria was in the hospital for a health problem related to her blood cells, called ‘sickle crisis,’ which can stop blood from moving properly in the body. She started feeling really sick and confused on July 5, but the doctors didn’t decide to take the brain scan until July 8. When they finally did the scan, they found out she was bleeding inside her brain.A smart doctor who knows a lot about children’s brains said that if the doctors had found the bleeding between July 5 and July 8, they might have been able to do something to stop Victoria from dying.Sadly, by July 8 and 9, when they did more scans, Victoria’s sickness couldn’t be fixed. She died in the hospital on July 12, 2019.The hospital bosses admitted they didn’t take care of Victoria the way they should have. During a big meeting called an inquest, where people talk and decide what happened, they talked about whether doing the brain scan earlier would have helped Victoria.One doctor thought Victoria needed the brain scan right away because her symptoms were serious. Even though Victoria’s mom and dad kept asking for the scan, it didn’t happen until Victoria had a seizure and got much worse.Experts said if they had found the bleeding earlier, they might have watched Victoria very closely in a special part of the hospital and asked brain surgeons for help. They also might have done a special blood treatment earlier than they did.Victoria’s family was very upset and wanted to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. The hospital said it learned from its mistakes.The meeting to figure out everything about Victoria’s care and if the hospital’s mistakes played a big part in her passing is still going on.