Girl, 3, Dies After Choking on a Grape

A young girl has died after choking on a grape on Monday.

Alice Emanuelly, aged three, from Goiânia in Brazil, woke up her sleeping mother asking for help after the grape got stuck in her airway.

"I didn't know what she had choked on, until then," Lediane Pereira, the girl's mother, told local news R7.

Neither Pereira nor the girl's father, José Roberto Araújo, could get the grape out, so they rushed her to a neighbor who is a nurse.

"I put her face down, I did all the maneuvers. I saw that the maneuver didn't work, [...] I put my finger on my throat and in the first [attempt] I already removed the grape," Marileide da Silva, the nurse, told R7.

Despite the efforts of da Silva, the girl died from complications of the choking after she was subsequently rushed to hospital.

Choking is a major risk for children, due to their tendency to put small objects into their mouths, their smaller airways and their lack of sophisticated chewing in the case of food.

Around 140 children choke to death annually in the U.S., according to the National Library of Medicine, with thousands of others needing medical assistance for brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation.

Grapes in particular are the perfect size and shape to slip into and block the airway of a child, forming a tight seal that makes it hard to dislodge, explains the Child Accident Prevention Trust. If the object isn't removed quickly, the child can asphyxiate, cutting off oxygen to the brain and eventually dying. The lack of oxygen can also lead to brain damage in the event that the child's life is saved.

Other objects that pose a choking risk to young children include foods such as nuts, popcorn and hotdog pieces, as well as household objects like buttons, marbles, coins and small toy parts, according to Saint Luke's Kansas City.

If a child who is choking can still talk or cough, Saint Luke's Kansas City advises not to give the Heimlich maneuver, but rather to encourage the child to cough until the object dislodges.

If the child cannot talk, indicating that their airways are completely blocked, then abdominal thrusts may be required until emergency services arrive. Putting a finger down the throat is not advised, as this may force the object deeper into the windpipe.

Children may also end up swallowing foreign objects: according to a 2019 paper in the journal Pediatrics, foreign-body ingestions have nearly doubled since the 1990s. These objects can also be dangerous to the child as batteries may cause internal chemical burns, while screws or nails may cause cuts inside the digestive tract.

The little girl's family is distraught at the loss of their child.

"I woke up in the morning, took my daughter to daycare, got her ready. 'Come on, my flower. Come on, my daughter.' Today things are the same as she left them," said Pereira.

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