When the Safi family escaped war-torn Afghanistan three years ago and settled in southwest Houston, the last thing they expected was losing a child to a communicable disease.
Last week, their 8-year-old son, Zakirullah Safi, fell ill at school and died shortly after. Health officials say it was meningitis.
“It’s so sad,” Hijratunnah Safi, who spoke on behalf of Zakirullah’s devastated parents, said. “They just give us a call from school like, ‘He has a fever, headache,’ we just take him to the hospital.”
HISD says a child fell ill on Oct. 10. The Safi family says they took their son to the hospital from Bonham Elementary, where he was a third-grade student. He died soon after.
As the Safi family grieved, parents at Bonham Elementary told ABC13 they were largely unaware of what happened.
“It’s literally so heartbreaking, I can’t imagine losing my baby,” Haylie Buckhan, mother of a Bonham first-grader, said.
Buckhan said she didn’t find out about the meningitis case until a few days ago and is now worried that the various budget cuts at HISD are impacting the school’s cleanliness.