Derek Achong

Se­nior re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing sev­en fam­i­lies, who have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to pur­sue a class ac­tion law­suit over the deaths of their ba­bies in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH), have iden­ti­fied an eighth po­ten­tial fam­i­ly to add to their case.

The le­gal team led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, gave the up­date in cor­re­spon­dence yes­ter­day to at­tor­ney Alana Bisses­sar, of Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide and Jacelon, which was re­tained to rep­re­sent the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) in the mat­ter.

In the let­ter, at­tor­ney Sue-Ann De­osaran pro­vid­ed de­tails about Nan­daranie Nathoo, whose son Jay­den Pierre died at the hos­pi­tal on March 16, a few weeks be­fore the sev­en ba­bies died over a four-day pe­ri­od.

De­osaran said Nathoo ini­tial­ly be­lieved her ba­by’s death was not ques­tion­able based on claims by doc­tors but came for­ward af­ter re­cent re­ports on the sev­en lat­est cas­es.

“On­ly up­on Nan­daranie hear­ing the news about oth­er women fac­ing sim­i­lar tragedies as her, she has now grown con­cerned re­gard­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her ba­by’s death,” De­osaran said.

Ac­cord­ing to De­osaran, Pierre was born pre­ma­ture­ly via cae­sare­an sec­tion at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal on Feb­ru­ary 22 and was trans­ferred to the PoS­GH NICU.

She claimed doc­tors did not in­di­cate any is­sues with the ba­by be­sides his pre­ma­ture birth un­til March 4, when Nathoo and the child’s fa­ther, Al­lis­ter Pierre, were re­port­ed­ly told the child had a bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion in his blood and was be­ing treat­ed with an­tibi­otics while lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing was pend­ing.

The cou­ple was al­leged­ly giv­en pos­i­tive up­dates re­gard­ing his con­di­tion be­fore they were told the in­fec­tion was still grow­ing and a blood trans­fu­sion was need­ed on March 13.

“This was con­cern­ing to Jay­den’s par­ents, and up­on ask­ing what the bac­te­ria was, one of the doc­tors in­formed them that they were still run­ning tests to fig­ure it out, but once again re­as­sured them that this was nor­mal for pre­ma­ture ba­bies,” De­osaran said.

De­osaran said the blood trans­fu­sion was per­formed on March 15. She claimed al­though the par­ents were told their ba­by’s con­di­tion was im­prov­ing, the fol­low­ing day they were in­formed his con­di­tion was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. She claimed the par­ents were on­ly al­lowed to see him but not hold him.

“Jay­den ap­peared swollen and bruised, with dis­coloura­tion on his hands, feet, face, and fore­head. See­ing him in such a state, Jay­den’s par­ents strug­gled to recog­nise their own child,” she said.

De­osaran claimed that he died sev­er­al hours lat­er, leav­ing the cou­ple dev­as­tat­ed and dis­traught, as Nathoo pre­vi­ous­ly had a mis­car­riage.

“It was their first child, and they spared no ef­fort in ready­ing them­selves for his home­com­ing: from pur­chas­ing clothes and a crib, to prepar­ing his nurs­ery by ren­o­vat­ing an en­tire room in their home, every de­tail was metic­u­lous­ly planned,” she said.

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia for a com­ment on the lat­est case iden­ti­fied by the lawyers, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh de­clined to do so, as he said the mat­ter was be­ing dealt with by the NWRHA’s le­gal team.

The sev­en oth­er par­ents whose ba­bies died have been iden­ti­fied as Shaniya Ray­mond-Adams, Sherise Moore-Beck­les, Natasha Samuel, Shaquille Har­ry, Danyelle Sama­roo, Tinelle Saun­ders and Jodie Moli­no.

Their le­gal team pro­vid­ed de­tails of Ray­mond-Adams and Moore-Beck­les’ cas­es in le­gal let­ters sent over the week­end. The cir­cum­stances of Sama­roo’s case was de­tailed in a sep­a­rate let­ter sent on Mon­day.

Sep­a­rate let­ters are now ex­pect­ed to be sent on be­half of the re­main­ing fam­i­lies, who will have to file sep­a­rate cas­es be­fore a judge de­cides whether they can be joined for the pro­posed class ac­tion law­suit.

In the four cas­es for which de­tails have al­ready been pro­vid­ed, one ma­jor com­mon fac­tor was that blood trans­fu­sions were per­formed be­fore the ba­bies died.

In a let­ter sent to the fam­i­lies’ le­gal team yes­ter­day, Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the le­gal let­ters sent on be­half of three of the fam­i­lies.

Bisses­sar claimed her client, as a “re­spon­si­ble health­care provider”, was ex­treme­ly con­cerned and deeply sad­dened by the deaths.

“Our client has pri­ori­tised this mat­ter and is com­mit­ted to ex­pe­di­tious­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing this mat­ter,” Bisses­sar said.

“Since this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent oc­curred, our client has been en­gag­ing in a com­pas­sion­ate, time­ly, fair and rea­son­able man­ner with the par­ents of these ba­bies,” she added.

Deal­ing with re­quests for dis­clo­sure of med­ical records, Bisses­sar claimed her client was in the process of mak­ing pho­to­copies as they were not elec­tron­i­cal­ly stored. She al­so claimed that she was not in a po­si­tion to im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to the in­di­vid­ual cas­es based on time con­straints. How­ev­er, she en­deav­oured to do so with­in a short time to avoid un­nec­es­sary ex­pen­sive lit­i­ga­tion.

Last­ly, Bisses­sar sought to ad­dress com­plaints over al­leged at­tempts by the NWRHA to meet with the fam­i­lies. A meet­ing was ini­tial­ly sched­uled for yes­ter­day but was sub­se­quent­ly can­celled due to ob­jec­tions from the lawyers.

While Bisses­sar agreed that dis­cus­sions re­lat­ed to the is­sue would on­ly be dealt with in their at­tor­neys’ pres­ence, she claimed the NWRHA’s med­ical so­cial work of­fi­cers would con­tin­ue to speak to the fam­i­lies.

De­osaran sought to re­spond to Bisses­sar’s let­ter in the cor­re­spon­dence sent on be­half of Nathoo.

Ad­dress­ing the con­duct of the NWRHA, she sug­gest­ed that the par­ents were all lied to about their ba­bies’ con­di­tions.

“The PoS­GH tried to cov­er up the scale and mag­ni­tude of this un­prece­dent­ed dis­as­ter that claimed the lives of sev­en in­no­cent ba­bies by treat­ing each pa­tient as though it was an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent,” De­osaran said.

“The PoS­GH was on­ly gal­vanised in­to com­ing clean on this mat­ter af­ter the me­dia ex­posed the fact that sev­en ba­bies had died.”

De­osaran al­so ques­tioned the lack of dig­i­tal med­ical records, as she claimed the fam­i­lies are con­cerned the records will be ma­nip­u­lat­ed be­fore dis­clo­sure.

“A man­u­al sys­tem would ob­vi­ous­ly be eas­i­er to ma­nip­u­late by pro­vid­ing easy ac­cess to med­ical notes that can be doc­tored or fal­si­fied,” she said.

“If the NWRHA is as con­cerned for their well-be­ing and safe­ty as it claims, ba­sic hu­man de­cen­cy, log­ic and com­mon sense dic­tates that these med­ical notes and records should be copied, scanned and emailed to us with­in 24 hours.”

De­osaran al­so said her clients were no longer in­ter­est­ed in coun­selling pro­vid­ed by the NWRHA, as they are fear­ful con­fi­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be twist­ed and ma­nip­u­lat­ed.

She al­so sug­gest­ed that the NWRHA pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for pri­vate coun­selling and hire an in­de­pen­dent med­ical ex­pert in in­fec­tious dis­eases to look in­to their cas­es.