The private doctor who treated swine flu victim Vishraj Maharaj days before his death last week says he cannot remember treating him.

The doctor also said he did not know Maharaj had swine flu, and only treated him once.

The doctor works out of a medical centre in Penal, and his medical treatment of Maharaj is now being investigated by the Health Ministry.

The investigation was requested by Health Minister Jerry Narace in response to articles written in the Express last week, detailing Maharaj’s final days before he died at the Intensive Care Unit of the San Fernando General Hospital.

Narace said he had instructed Dr Anton Cumberbatch, the Chief Medical Officer, to thoroughly investigate the clinical processes followed by the doctor and by public and private hospitals where swine flu victims were being treated.

Maharaj, 30, of Realize Road, Barrackpore, fell ill two Wednesdays ago. His family said he sought treatment from the doctor twice, was given injections and an intravenous fluid, and sent home. On October 12, he was taken to the Princes Town District Hospital. By the following night, he was dead at the ICU in San Fernando.

The doctor said he had no records of treating Vishraj Maharaj, but had a record of a man with surname ’Maraj’. The doctor had not been contacted by the Health Ministry up to late yesterday.

Maharaj’s sister, Pamela Jaganath, refuted the doctor’s claims. She said, ’We took him there twice-the Wednesday and the Saturday-and we know that he is the one who saw him. He is not telling the truth. We called him and told him that if he had sent (Maharaj) with a letter to the hospital when we took him back on the Saturday, he might have still been alive.’

She said, ’When we asked him to do the test for the virus, he said it was too late to do it and gave (Maharaj) another injection and a bag of drips and sent him back home,’ she said.