The Current - His wife died from sepsis after childbirth — now he's calling for a national strategy

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Gurinder and Ravinder Sidhu were excited to welcome their third baby in June. That excitement turned to fear and then grief after Ravinder died from sepsis shortly after her son's birth. Gurinder joins us to talk about how he believes the nurses and doctors didn't act fast enough to treat his wife — and even ignored their pleas for help. And why he's calling for better sepsis care so no other family has to go through what he is enduring. Then two experts talk about why Canada desperately needs a sepsis strategy. An estimated one in eighteen deaths in Canada are from sepsis, many of which Fatima Sheikh, a PhD candidate at McMaster University, and Dr Kali Barrett, a critical care physician and affiliate scientist with the Health Systems and Policy Research Collaborative Centre at UHN, say are preventable.

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and like all parents, they were hoping for a smooth delivery. What unfolded was anything but. Ravinder developed an infection in hospital, and days later, she died of sepsis. Sepsis is what happens when your body's response to an infection becomes so severe that it damages vital organs and often causes death. Ravinder's case has reignited calls for a better sepsis care initiative across this country. Grinder Situ joins us from his home in Brampton, Ontario. Grinder, good morning.

Good morning, man. I'm so sorry for what you have gone through and what your family has gone through. Yeah, thank you. Can you tell me a little bit, if you would, just about the day that your son was born, when did you start to realize that something was wrong with your wife? Yeah, so our son was born on June 19. and he was born around 5 a.m. And we were moved to the recovery room around 8 a.m.

Soon after that, around 11, 15 a.m., she started to have shivers, rigors. And her jaw dropped and she could not speak. And I ran to the nurses, called the nurses, and they came over, gave us some blankets, and I started rubbing over the blankets to produce heat. That was the first moment when I realized. that something is wrong with Ravindra, and she also realized that.

What did the nurses tell you about what was happening? So we were given the student nurse. She had no idea what was happening, and Rav had an argument with her, that she told that she wanted a charge nurse to be taken care of her because she knew that something is very wrong with her health. The charge nurse came, and she told Rav what is happening to you, and I've asked her, please you figure out what's happening to me.

I'm thinking that I'm not doing well. I'm starting to have a lot of pain in my pelvic area, and I'm having hypothermia and my increased blood clots. So they had this discussion, and after that the doctor came in and ordered some tests. What was going through your mind? You're not a doctor, you're not a medical professional. As this is unfolding, what's going through your mind?

Yeah, I never saw when they're like shivering so vigor. and she could not even speak. So I was kind of very worried. We were married for 10 years and this is the first time I saw her like that. And I ran to the nurses and when even the doctor came, I explained her everything that I was so worried. And she told me that it might be an infection or beginning of infection and she ordered that CBC complete blood count test. But she did not order the test which is specific to the infection. infection, which are blood cultures. After a couple of hours, the white blood count came high as well, and she developed a fever, 39.2 degrees Celsius, but there was no follow-up by the doctors, and our nursing staff also ignored it, and we were about the temperature I knew after her death that she had a fever. It must have been excruciating for you to watch your wife go through this. It was very difficult time for us because she was going through so much pain, and blood loss. She were only given tenol and advil. We requested narcotics multiple times.

They're also recorded in their notes, nurses and doctors, but they did not prescribe any medicine throughout the day and whole night. My wife spent whole night in pain and mourning, but she were only administered tannol and ad val. Your sister-in-law is an intensive care unit nurse in Buffalo, New York. And at some point during this time, you got her involved. You were speaking to her through FaceTime, right? Yeah, so next morning,

Ravindar's symptom was getting worse and her blood pressure got into like 63 by 35 and heart rate went to 150s. In desperation, because these nurses were not listening to me, I called my sister-in-law who was a nurse in Buffalo. And over the face time, just by looking at the monitor, she told me that Grinda, she's going into septic shock.

Where are the nurses? Where is rapid response? She need to be admitted to ICU right away. And I ran to the nurse and I told her that my sister-in-law wants to talk to you. This nurse totally dismissed all the concerns and she said, oh, we are waiting for the doctor. And by listening all this negligent behavior, my sister-in-law, she left Buffalo to draw to Credit Valley, Mississauga. And she reached here, Mississauga, around 11 a.m. But still, we were not taken care of by this time, even after so many warnings. So she said she was able to see just through the FaceTime that Revinder was going into septic shock and was so upset that she jumped in

her car and drove across the border into Canada. Yes. She wanted to talk to the nurse on the face time, and nurse refused. And she said, I will only talk over the phone. So then we talk over the phone with the nurse, and she told her that she's also a nurse. I understand that you guys have protocols, but if she were in USA, she would be already in ICU. So what you guys are doing, and I hope that you take good care of her, I'm also coming to advocate for my sister. At what point in this process did the medical staff actually test for an infection in your wife? So this is the irony that even the doctor came, the nurses came. They were looking for the visit sign of infection. They must have done some steps to prevent the infection in the first place.

They started taking it seriously when infection became visible on her leg. Then only they took my wife seriously and decided to transfer to ICU. But before that, they were just looking at the visible signs of infection, did not take blood culture, did not administer any antibiotics, and her blood pressure was low, her heart rate was high, her face was pale, she could not void, go to washroom, but no escalation the whole day till 4 p.m. This went on for something like 29 hours, is that right? Yeah, so after 29 hours from the first symptoms, around 30 hours from the first symptom appeared, she was administered targeted antibiotics. And internal medicine got involved in infection

disease, doctor involved after around 30 hours. At some point, she was transferred from that hospital to a different hospital, right? Yeah, so she went to ICU in Crater Valley and then weight started there. There was already 30-hour delay and then they waited another 24 hours to do the main source control surgery of removing her uterus. So there's another 24-hour delay in doing the source control surgery. And then she waited another 12 hours and when things got out of control, I think, for these doctors, they decided to move her to Sunny Brooks. And the irony is before she went into any surgery, I requested the ICU doctor to move her to Sunny Brooks so that I can give the maximum chance of survivability to my wife. He denied, he said, it's a fancy hospital.

And I have my training done in Sunny Brooks. She has maximum chance of survival in Criter Valley. And I listened to her and followed his lead, but now I know that she was not. given the best care possible. This is a really difficult question to ask, but she was transferred to Sonnybrook and she died there. She died shortly after she got to the hospital. After having two surgeries at Credit Valley, when she were transferred to Sunnybrook, she went through another surgery, the third surgery, and a lot of her body parts were removed.

And just imagine that after giving birth to a child, it itself is a big undertaking for a woman's body and after that having three charges done in the general anesthesia and all that so much damage was done to her body and then she just could not she just come to her injuries yeah i'm so sorry thank you what have you learned about why this happened why do you think you think the calls for treatment the calls for people to and you've listed this the calls for doctors and nurses to take this seriously, we're dismissed. Why do you think she didn't get the care that you believe she should have gotten? So I think there are multiple factors involved. One of the factor might be the racism in our health care system. My wife

already launched when she was alive, one complaint when one of the Obis were telling her that your baby is too big and you cannot push this much of a baby because you are south-eastern. and if you are of any European background, you could do it. And when my wife told her that she's a pelvic floor physiotherapist herself, and she is trying to strengthen her muscle to deliver the baby, and she told her that you can strengthen your muscle, but you cannot change your South Asian bony pelvis. That was her exact comments.

And my wife launched a complaint when she was alive. This just tell you the kind of racism built in the system and then another piece of the puzzle might be the complacency and incompetence. So they might not be trained at how these infections can spread so quickly and they need to act very quickly. Our healthcare system is too slow to act and these infections are progress very quickly and we need to get hold of them very quickly. they were unable to distinguish the symptoms my wife were having from other patients. So I think that was another piece of this whole story. So multiple failure at multiple levels, and I think it's a leadership failure too, because how come multiple nurses and doctors failed at once?

What does it like for you to look back on this and think that if things had been done differently? If she had been listened to, if you had been listened to, that we would, be having this conversation, that things could have turned out so much differently. Yeah, so Matt, my wife, she fought with this infection for four days, almost two and half days without any help. And imagine that if the help would have arrived sooner, she was such a fighter that she would have the best chance of survivability and she could have made it. But there was no support after the delivery immune system is already very weak. And all the doctors know about it. What is the harm of giving her antibiotics? And these doctors have too much of

discretion. Like, they can decide who could live and who die. They can just choose not to give antibiotics to a particular patient and that patient die soon after that. So I think that nurses were the first point of contact with my wife. Why we don't give some power to these nurses so that they can administer some of these life-saving drugs. So all these questions come to my mind, and I'm trying to find answers. You agreed to speak with us about this. This is incredibly difficult, and I can't imagine what you have gone through. As you mentioned, your wife, and you've said this, she was a fighter.

Why is it important for you to talk about this? Yeah, because if something would have happened to me, she would have done the same thing. She would have spread the awareness. she would have demanded the answer. She would have advocated for better care for all the mothers, and that's what I'm doing as well. And I want to make sure that no other family had to go through this, and especially in postpartum cases where not only mother is involved,

as small babies also involved, because our baby will never know her mother's embrace. and it's very hard to raise a baby without the mother. So multiple lives are involved. So I really hope that this will bring the change to our medical system and we should have a national protocol on sepsis. So I really hope that no other mother has to go through this, what my wife has to go through.

How many more mothers have to die before we act? You've been through a lot as well. How are you holding up? I'm taking one day at a time. Sometimes, like a couple of days ago, we had a first day at school, and that was very emotional day for our family. This was the first time my parents went without saying goodbye to their mom. And the whole day, I tried and thought about what happened to our family.

And some days, like her thought gave me strength because she was such a strong person and a beautiful person. So she gives me strength sometimes that, okay, I need to move on. I need to take care of the kids. If I become weak, I won't be able to take care of my three children. So my children give me strength.

They also tell me that, that please don't cry. Please, they motivate me to move forward in life. And I'm so thankful for my family and support for the sport. I'm so sorry for everything that has happened. You speaking about this is really important, but it's incredibly difficult. I just wanted to say thank you for being willing to talk to us. And again, I'm sorry for what you have gone through

and ask that you take care of yourself as well. Thank you, Mayor. Gorindersidu's wife, Risbindersit, who died in June days after giving birth. There are two kinds of Canadians, those who feel something when they hear this music, And those who've been missing out so far, I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Neil Kuxel. We are the co-hosts of As It Happens. And every day we speak with people at the center of the day's most hard-hitting, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious news stories.

Also, we have puns. Here Why As It Happens is one of Canada's longest running in most beloved shows. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We contacted Trillium Health, which operates at the Credit Valley Hospital to comment on Grinder's concerns. and they replied that they cannot share individual medical details because of patient privacy, but say that they do conduct a structured review process to understand what happened, why it happened, and what can be improved. They said, and this is a quotation, questions about symptom, recognition, signs of illness,

treatment timelines, and transferred decisions are at the very heart of our review process. We also contacted the Credit Valley Obstetricians and Gynaecology Association, the clinic where Revinder received prenatal care. They sent us a statement which reads, part as physicians and health care professionals, serving one of the most diverse communities in the world, we are committed to providing the highest quality care that is evidence-based, patient-centered, culturally sensitive and inclusive. While we cannot share details due to our obligations to protect patient privacy, we remain dedicated to working with patients and families

to ensure their care needs are met with compassion and respect. The SIDU's family is not unique. In Canada, it is estimated that one out of every 18 deaths is caused by sepsis. Fatima Shake is a doctoral candidate in the faculty of health sciences, a McMaster University and a health equity specialist at Hamilton Health Sciences. And Dr. Callie Barrett is a Toronto-based critical care physician and affiliate scientist with a health systems and policy research collaborative center at the University Health Network. They published a paper last year calling for national action plans on sepsis. And they're both with us in studio. Good morning. Good morning. I'm still shaken by what we just heard. It's heartbreaking and it's upsetting. And I don't

want you to comment on the specifics because um there are details that as we say are still being examined but when you hear something like that fatima what goes through your mind i mean i'll start by saying like my sincere condolences to mr sedu's family it's absolutely a heartbreaking story and um it takes so much courage to come out and speak about it after such a tragic event um for me you know it's it's heartbreaking it's a story that i've heard before through many of our patient and family advisors. And it's one that, you know, highlights to me that there's an opportunity to do better as a health system. Dr. Barrett, what is happening in the body when it goes into sepsis? So it's very complicated, but essentially the body is, its immune system in responding to that

bacterial or viral infection kind of gets out of control. And it causes this chain reaction that leads to inflammation. And one of the sort of most common signs, and we heard about that in the story we just heard, was that people's blood pressure goes low. And that's very dangerous. And that's why people start to have difficulty concentrating. They become a little bit on their level of consciousness drops.

And then they can also, they go into multi-organ failure. So the organs shut down. And so we heard Gorinda talk there about what he saw as delays in getting blood tests. How quickly should doctors and nurses be doing things like getting blood tests, like administering antibiotics? Yeah. So essentially, the minute you start thinking this might be sepsis or this could be sepsis, the first steps are giving a dose of antibiotics that would cover the most likely bacterial pathogens, and then sending appropriate blood tests, including a CBC or the complete blood count, but also things like a lactate, which measures whether or not there's enough oxygen or blood pressure,

being delivered to all of the cells. To your point, time matters here. Time matters, yeah. So the hospital sent us a statement where they outlined their approach to sepsis care and it said in part the clinicians exercised their clinical judgment to look at lab results in vital science

and balance those with, and these are their words, other possible explanations while acting in a timely manner to treat the suspected underlying cause. Again, I'm not asking you to comment on the specific case, but how difficult is that to balance in practice, to diagnose something when it may be something else? Yeah. So that's complicated. And that is part of the art and science of medicine. But we need to remember that physicians are human and we can get into sort of cognitive problems. And that's why we have to design our health systems so that there are no misses. And we do that in another condition. So we think about stroke or heart attack. Everyone is so conditioned to know that the signs of a stroke, we know what they look like. And then we immediately say, this could be stroke. We need to deal with it.

And similarly, it's recognizing that sepsis is a health emergency like stroke, like heart attack, but also building in systems and warning systems in the health system so that it's not up to a clinician having to think about that thing that they've maybe never thought about. Because it's automatic. Because it's automatic. It's already happening. Talk more about the urgency of this, Fatima. I'd read that one in six hospitalizations in the province of Ontario alone involves an episode of sepsis. How familiar is this story in some ways and how big of a problem is the proper diagnosis and treatment of sepsis in this country? I mean, it's as simple as the fact that any infection can lead to sepsis, right?

So, you know, something as simple as, you know, a paper cut on a person's finger. We've heard that story to something like someone coming in with a routine pregnancy and ending up in the situation that we've just heard about. So it's something that is quite common in our hospital settings. it's also worth recognizing that 80% to 90% of those cases actually start in the community. So that early recognition, the ability to detect those signs and symptoms is absolutely critical, both for our public, you know, the patients and families that are coming into the health system to know, you know, something's going wrong. I need to get sort of some help.

And the second piece, you know, within the health system or health professionals, an ability to be able to detect those signs and symptoms and to act accordingly. Like you said, one and six, you know, cases are within the hospital and are associated with sepsis, one and six hospitalizations. And there is significant morbidity and mortality associated with sepsis. We also know that for those who survive, they're left with long-term consequences, whether it's a result of amputations or, you know, significant sequelae associated with being, for example, in the intensive care unit for long periods of time. Can I ask you about one of the other really upsetting parts of the story, which is Garinda talking about how the family felt dismissed or ignored, that they believe, the family believes that how she was treated was discriminatory? How does that square, we talk a lot about this broadly, but from your perspective, how does that square from what you've heard from patients? Yeah, I'll say this. We know that health conditions like sepsis are not just a function of, biology. So we did a review a few years back looking at the social determinants of health or the

social conditions in which people live. And we demonstrated that factors like race, like socioeconomic status, ethnicity and gender all impact your risk of developing sepsis. And we also identify that individuals living in sort of disadvantaged to communities, whether that's, you know, lack of access to health care settings, whether that's socioeconomic status, also have increased risk of coming into our health systems. And we know that the experiences when they are in the health system are multifactorial, right? An ability for someone to know something is wrong, to then articulate those ideas in a way that is understood by our healthcare providers.

And to feel seen and heard is really challenging. So we know that there are a number of factors associated with that and that factors like race and socioeconomic status and ethnicity and whether you speak language. English as your first language are all factors at play. We just have a couple of minutes left. You've said that this is an opportunity, a tragic opportunity to do better in the future. And you've both called for a national action plan on sepsis. What would that look like?

I was reading about what's happening in Nova Scotia, for example, where they created kind of sepsis treatment kits, rapid response, so that nurses can call for treatment without doctor approval, for example. Is that kind of what we need to do if you're talking, Dr. Barrett, about time being at the center of this in some ways? Yes, absolutely. There are so many excellent examples in Canada where these sorts of protocols have been developed.

Why don't we have that across the country? Because it hasn't been prioritized at government levels. Yeah. So it takes governments saying, oh, this is a quality issue that we need to actually address in our health system. Let's ask hospitals to make sure that we're actually doing this properly.

And then when it's a reporting metric and it's prioritized by the governments and hospitals, then the brilliant quality improvement people and the brilliant people working in our health, health system, they'll get working on it. But this is doable. It's a completely doable. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're nodding to that as well. Yeah, absolutely. This is something that we know we can address. We've seen it, you know, globally. Other countries have implemented sepsis national action plans

and that include sepsis policies and guidelines for our health professional training standards. And they've demonstrated better detection, reduced morbidity and mortality and savings for our health care system that ultimately benefit the patients and families that are seeking care. So we absolutely can do better. What would it take? We just have a few seconds left. What would it take to do that? I just think of that strength that we just heard from Gorinda talking about his wife. What would it take to have that listened to? Yeah. I think we lean into that strength. It comes down to sort of public awareness of what sepsis is. And we've seen our patients and families advocating for that inclusion in health professional training standards so that it can be detected.

putting in place those rapid protocols so that once it's detected, there's clear pipeline for how best to manage sepsis. And then we need to be collecting robust data on, you know, sepsis so that we can accurately track when it's happening and how frequently it's occurring so we can continuously monitor and improve our efforts. Thank you both for being here this morning. Thank you. Fatima Sheikh is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster

University Health Equity Specialist at Hamilton Health Sciences Hospital. And Dr. Callie Barrett is a Toronto-based. critical care physician, an affiliate scientist with the Health Systems and Policy Research Collaborative Center at the University Health Network. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.