Widow asks why Westport hospital sent Filipino carpenter home before his death

Liselie Lozano was on the phone from the Philippines to her husband in Westport when he collapsed.

She heard his roommate cry to another flatmate: "Come here, come here, we'll help Leo because he's dying already."

An hour later Leonides Lozano, 51, was pronounced dead at the Westport acute stabilisation unit (hospital).

Tomorrow he will be laid to rest in the Philippines. "I did not expect him to go home to us in a coffin," Liselie said.

She wants to know why Westport hospital let Leo go home with extremely high blood pressure just hours before he died and why he was not given an ECG.

Leo Lozano's death on 17 July has prompted a Serious Incident Review by Health NZ. His death has left his wife and four children, aged eight to 28, without a husband, father and sole breadwinner.

Speaking from their home in the Philippines, Liselie Lozano told The Westport News she was angry at the way her husband had been treated.

She said Leo went to Westport hospital about 8am on 17 July complaining of pain in his stomach, radiating to his backbone. A doctor believed the pain came from Leo's stomach ulcers.

Liselie said she was on a video call with Leo when a doctor took his blood pressure. The first reading was so high, the doctor took it again. The reading was the same - 192.

"The doctor explained to Leo, 'Your BP is high because of the stomach ulcers'."

Leo was already on maintenance medication for his high blood pressure.

Liselie said she felt relieved her husband was being cared for in hospital. She expected he would stay there and receive treatment to reduce his blood pressure.

At midday she video-called Leo again. He was still in the hospital, eating lunch. He told her he had had blood tests and the results would decide whether he was admitted.

At 1.30pm Liselie video-called Leo again. He was driving back to the Cape Foulwind home he shared with workmates.

He told her, "The doctor said I'm OK, I can go out", and to return to the hospital if he felt worse.

He was also told the hospital had sent a prescription to Buller Pharmacy for him, but it was not there when he called for it. The pharmacy told him to return at 4pm, Liselie said.

She called Leo back at 4.30pm. He told her he had only been prescribed omeprazole - a medicine commonly used to treat conditions like ulcers which produce too much acid in the stomach.

Liselie was shocked.

"I tell him, 'The doctor did not give you medicine for your BP to go down?' He said 'no'… "I was very, very scared."

Liselie said she told Leo to go back to the hospital. She heard him about to ask a roommate to drive him there when Leo collapsed.

"Leo's roommate heard a loud thud and when he [opened] the door he saw Leo lying on the floor."

The roommate called to their flatmate: "Come here, come here, we'll help Leo because he's dying already."

Liselie shouted Leo's name. He did not answer.

"Total silence already. I shout three times, and then all I can hear is the voice of Leo like, 'Ah, ah, (gasping)'.

"I want to help him, I want to carry him, but all I have is my phone only in my hand … I'm helpless."

Leo's workmates knew he had been at the hospital that morning and rushed him back - a 10-minute drive from Cape Foulwind. Attempts to revive him failed and he was pronounced dead at 5.30pm.

Health NZ West Coast has previously refused to answer questions from The News, or to explain why Hato Hone St John Ambulance and local volunteer firefighters were called to the hospital to assist.

Health NZ West Coast would say only that the hospital - which has been plagued by short staffing and closures - was open and staffed as normal.

Health NZ West Coast has also refused to say whether there was a doctor on site when emergency services were called. The News understands there was not.

Liselie said she had later asked why her husband had been allowed to go home when his blood pressure was 192.

The doctor told her they had seen Leo eating his lunch and Leo had said: "I'm fine, good, no more pain."

Liselie asked why her husband had died.

"The doctor told me the stomach ulcers of Leo had burst and then they saw three and a half litres of blood in his stomach. And that was the cause of his cardiac arrest because no blood going to his heart."

Liselie gave permission for an autopsy. It found "acute aortic dissection in the context of severe hypertensive heart disease, complicated by haemopericardium which was unretrievable".

That means Leo had extremely high blood pressure, his main artery had ruptured, and blood had poured into the tissue surrounding his heart. It was an unsurvivable event.

"It is the opposite of what the doctor told me, that his stomach ulcer burst," Liselie said. "That's why I'm very angry. I still have four children here and Leo is the only one who support us."

The family has three daughters: Hermone, eight, Eowyn 18 and Lois 28, and a son Durt, 11. Their father had been in Westport since February 2023, working as a carpenter for South Peak Homes.

Liselie said South Peak had told Leo the day before he died that his job was being made redundant and he would have to return to the Philippines if he could not find other work.

She said he was very stressed by the bad news.

South Peak was now paying her husband's bank loans and had paid for his body to return to the Philippines, she said.

Leo had planned to apply for New Zealand residency for himself next year and bring his family to New Zealand to join him.

"What will we do now? ...Leo is the only one who provide for us, he's the family man, he's the breadwinner."

Liselie said she had spoken to doctors in the Philippines who thought New Zealand was a "good country" and could not understand what had happened.

"My husband paid tax, big tax, then a single medicine for my husband for his blood pressure to go down, the doctor did not give him. Why the doctor only give him omeprazole?"

Neither she nor Leo had received the results of the blood tests he had had in the hospital, she said.

- This story was first published by Westport News