Dance festival doctor out of his depth

The sole doctor working at a music festival warned organisers he’d never dealt with a drug overdose.

Dr Krishna Sura, the sole doctor hired to worked at the Lost Paradise music festival in December 2018 where Joshua Tam died, outside the inquest today. Picture: Bianca De Marchi/AAP

The sole doctor employed to run the medical tent at a dance festival with 11,000 revellers has told an inquest he was so out of his depth he’d been forced to hand over the treatment of a young man dying of a drug overdose to a paramedic.

Brisbane rugby fan Joshua Tam, 22, had a temperature of 43C and a heart rate of 190 when he was taken to the medical tent at the Lost Paradise festival on the NSW central coast on December 29 last year.

Krishna Sura, aSydney GP who was the only doctor rostered for the entire four-day festival, said Mr Tam had been thrashing ­violently and was so “agitated” he needed to be held down by eight people, a strong indicator that he had a lethal level of the party drug, MDMA, in his system.

Giving evidence yesterday at the inquest into six drug-related deaths at NSW dance music festivals, Dr Sura said he had quickly assessed he could not give Tam the critical care he needed and asked a NSW Ambulance intensive care paramedic to take over.

Dr Sura told the inquest he had repeatedly warned Mike Hammond, the boss of the festival’s ­private medical contractor Events Medical Services (EMS), that he had no experience dealing with drug overdoses and he was “not capable” of intubating a critically ill patient. Asked why EMS had still decided to employ him, Dr Sura said he could only conclude “they were struggling to get ­doctors”.

Joshua Tam died after taking a lethal dose of MDMA crystal rock at the Lost Paradise electronic dance music festival on December 29 last year. Picture: Supplied

Mr Hammond is due to give evidence when the inquest ­resumes in September.

Dr Sura’s assessment of the inadequate level of care provided for Lost Paradise revellers — in heatwave conditions — came on day six of the inquest.

Tam died on the second day of the Lost Paradise festival after taking an estimated four to five doses of MDMA crystal rock.

The inquest has heard all six victims died from an overdose of MDMA which, at toxic levels, causes muscles to start breaking down into the bloodstream, causing cardiac arrest. The only hope of survival for people suffering an MDMA overdose, the inquest has been told, is to paralyse the patient then intubate them, a highly specialised procedure that can be performed only by critical care doctors with a medical support team.

Outside the inquest, Tam’s mother, Julie Tam, said she had personally thanked Dr Sura for being “brave” enough to admit to the fact he did not have the experience to cope with her son’s critical condition, through no fault of his own.

‘‘I think the important thing here … is not about finding blame or pointing fingers and it was actually quite refreshing to listen to the doctor as frank and as honest as he was,” Mrs Tam said.

She said hearing evidence of what her son went through in the last hours of his life was ­harrowing.

As with all the families ­invol­ved in the inquest, her hope was it would lead to a major policy shake-up to prevent any more young lives being lost. “I think today for us, emotionally, was the most difficult,” Mrs Tam said.

“It is incredibly surreal listening to the slow demise of your child over a period of time, what happened and how it all transpired — you can just never prepare for that as a parent.”

Earlier, the inquest was told Tam may have ingested the equivalent of four to five MDMA pills and washed them down with a full bottle of vodka.

One of Tam’s closest friends, whose name has suppressed, told the inquest the last time he saw his friend alive he had been “freaking out” over losing his bankcard, but he then lost him.

Asked by counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer, whether he was aware of the risks of mixing MDMA with alcohol or any other drugs, he said: “We all knew it was dangerous but we did it anyway, I guess. I didn’t think anyone would die.”

The friend said he and his mates “would never ever” take drugs again.

He said young people needed “clear and precise’’ messages “drilled into them” about the ­effects of MDMA, “what it actually does to your body, what will actually happen, your temperature may rise …”

“I think its stupid not to have testing at all music festivals,’’ he said.