Dozens of people demonstrated outside Limassol general hospital on Monday after a four-year-old boy suffered brain damage due to meningitis, which the family claimed had not been diagnosed in time.

The protesters held banners saying ‘An angel was calling for help. Murderers. Why did you leave him without help?’ and ‘Seven days in room 1. Seven days I was shouting and not heard’.

The protest was organised by the family of the boy – Marios – with his mother demanding the allocation of responsibility.

The boy developed a fever on July 8 and for the next few days his parents were in contact with the paediatrician, who prescribed medication and tests.

When the boy’s health did not improve, he was taken to Limassol general hospital, where he was diagnosed with meningitis.

As the boy’s health continued to show no sign of improvement, the parents insisted he be transferred to Makarios hospital in Nicosia.

On July 14, while on the way to the Makarios hospital, the boy appears to have become brain dead.

He is still being treated at the Makarios hospital.

Speaking to the press, Marios’ mother, Andri Charalambous, pledged to fight till the end.

“It is not acceptable that a child with meningitis suffers oedema and intussusception and is just given antipyretics, to be told on the 13th that everything is fine and on the 14th that my baby has died,” Charalambous said.

The mother had been told that Marios would be blind. “I wish he had become blind because he would be with me. I would become his eyes,” she said.

“The only thing this state has to do is deliver justice […] there are responsibilities and they must be attributed. Anyone who should go to jail, with the murderers, should go to jail,” she added.

Okypy said it sympathised with the family and that police and internal investigations were under way.

It added that statements had been taken and that everyone was innocent until proven guilty.

Okypy assured it was cooperating with the authorities for the “immediate, unbiased and objective investigation of every claim or complaint”.