David (right) and Collet (left) Stephan. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Doctors disagree on cause of Ezekiel Stephan’s death

Aug 28, 2019 | 10:08 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Dr. Anny Sauvigeau returned to the stand Tuesday to continue her testimony into the death of the 19-month-old in March of 2012.

At the time, she was the Chief Medical Examiner with Alberta Health Services and hired Dr. Bamidele Adeagbo to be the lead coroner.

The two have made it clear that they did not agree on the cause of death for Ezekiel, the child of David and Collet Stephan, who are each on trial for one count of failing to provide the necessaries of life.

During the autopsy, both Dr Sauvigeau and Dr. Adeagbo agreed that there was puss in the brain but differ on whether this was evidence of bacterial meningitis or viral meningitis.

According to Dr. Sauvigeau, Dr. Adeagbo believed that the presence of puss necessarily means that the child suffered from the bacterial form of the disease.

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While that would most often be the case, Dr. Sauvigeau told court that there are exceptions to this.

Two of the types of white blood cells are known as neutrophils and lymphocytes.

She explains that, if Ezekiel had bacterial meningitis, neutrophils would be present in the brain, but she says that none were. Instead, there was a higher presence of lymphocytes, but adds that they would not be attracted to the brain if it were bacterial meningitis.

While Dr. Sauvigeau believed that there is a higher likelihood that the cause of death was viral meningitis, she could not say that with 100% certainty.

Testing for viral infections need to be done as soon as possible in order to be reliable, but Dr. Adeagbo reportedly did not order one in time.

Dr. Sauvigeau also had a “very serious concern” with the way in which testing was carried out.

She claims that Dr. Adeagbo did the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test himself and does not believe that he took the proper steps to ensure all of the tools used in the operation were sterilized.

Dr. Sauvigeau admits that this could have resulted in bacteria that was already on the medical tools being transferred to Ezekiel by mistake, which might have potentially tainted the diagnosis towards being bacterial meningitis.

If Ezekiel did contract viral meningitis instead of bacterial meningitis, it could potentially be important for the trial.

While Dr. Sauvigeau says antibiotics were given to the child rather late in the process, they would not have done much to combat a viral strain of meningitis anyways.

Justice Terry Clackson told court Monday that he hopes to have the trial completed by the end of this week.