One cou­ple is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to amend its poli­cies when it comes to the death and dis­pos­al of pre­ma­ture ba­bies.

The call comes two weeks af­ter the cou­ple’s ba­by died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) on No­vem­ber 8.

The griev­ing mom and dad, who asked not to be named, said their ba­by boy was born at 20 weeks.

They re­called, that around 8.30 pm on No­vem­ber 7, the moth­er be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pain in her ab­domen and then her wa­ter broke.

With the help of the para­medics, her hus­band de­liv­ered the ba­by at home and then she was rushed to PoS­GH.

How­ev­er, she claimed the re­al shock came af­ter ar­riv­ing at the hos­pi­tal hope­ful that her son’s life would be saved on­ly to be giv­en lit­tle care.

The ba­by’s moth­er claimed, “They said it don’t have any doc­tor right now. The ba­by would not be able to make it be­cause the ba­by is un­der 26 weeks and that’s their pol­i­cy. So, my hus­band asked them, but the ba­by is breath­ing, so in the mean­time could any­thing be done to save his life? They said no. They said there’s noth­ing that could be done. But, I found it was strange, while the ba­by was alive some­thing could have been done.”

She said be­cause the ba­by was born at five months, the hos­pi­tal did not place him in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU).

In­stead, she claimed the ba­by was placed in the hos­pi­tal bassinet next to her and not giv­en any sup­port.

The par­ents al­leged to make mat­ters worse, the hos­pi­tal staff was ready to get rid of the ba­by be­fore he even took his last breath.

The ba­by’s fa­ther claimed, “Hours af­ter they came and told me I need to sign a pa­per. I ask what the pa­per was about? They said they need to take the ba­by for test­ing be­fore they got rid of it. But I couldn’t un­der­stand ... I think that was re­al­ly, re­al­ly hurt­ful and know­ing that we were see­ing the ba­by still breath­ing and they ask­ing us to sign to give it to them.”

The cou­ple said while they try to come to terms with the loss of their ba­by, they can­not ac­cept that they could not give him a prop­er bur­ial.

The ba­by’s fa­ther added, “They say it’s a fe­tus and it’s con­sid­ered to be ‘bio waste’ so they have to get rid of it. That was trau­mat­ic and still is trau­mat­ic ... We be­lieve if we got the body, that could bring us some clo­sure.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to both Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) An­tho­ny Blake for com­ment.

Deyals­ingh has not yet re­spond­ed.

Blake, how­ev­er, ex­tend­ed his sym­pa­thies to the par­ents but said the hos­pi­tal was fol­low­ing the laws of the land.

He said while he un­der­stands the plight of the par­ents, the foe­tus could have been ex­posed to all sorts of in­fec­tions and could have caused harm to the par­ents when they come in con­tact with the re­mains.

Blake said, “The NWRHA fol­lows the guide­lines es­tab­lished by the rel­e­vant laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the Bur­ial Grounds Act and the Births and Deaths Reg­is­tra­tion Act. These laws are ap­plic­a­ble to vi­able in­fants who can be reg­is­tered as births or deaths and there­fore can be af­ford­ed a for­mal bur­ial or cre­ma­tion. For mis­car­riages, the re­mains are re­gard­ed as clin­i­cal tis­sue. This is in line with stan­dard med­ical prac­tice for bi­o­log­i­cal tis­sue dis­pos­al, en­sur­ing it is han­dled re­spect­ful­ly and in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished reg­u­la­tions. We un­der­stand the emo­tion­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the mat­ter. We are will­ing to meet with the fam­i­ly to pro­vide fur­ther ex­pla­na­tions and any sup­port they may re­quire dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time.”

A se­nior health of­fi­cial ex­plained that a ba­by born be­fore 24 weeks is not con­sid­ered vi­able or ca­pa­ble of sur­viv­ing life ear­ly out­side the womb in this coun­try.

But the par­ents said they want to see the pol­i­cy changed.

“Some­body who car­ry a ba­by for how­ev­er long, may it be a month, two months, what­ev­er, they al­ready have a close bond to that ba­by. They have plans for the fu­ture with that ba­by. If they should lose it, they should be able to have prop­er clo­sure, and it should be their choice if they de­cide to leave it in the hos­pi­tal or if they want to go with it to be able to bury it.”