RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

A moth­er has tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) af­ter she was de­nied ac­cess to cru­cial doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the deaths of sev­en new­borns at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) in April.

Shanya Ray­mond-Adams, who is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, has filed for ju­di­cial re­view un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) af­ter the NWRHA re­fused to dis­close its in­ter­nal in­ves­tiga­tive re­port and oth­er re­quest­ed doc­u­ments. The ap­pli­ca­tion was filed in Oc­to­ber.

The deaths, which oc­curred be­tween April 2 and 9, stemmed from hos­pi­tal-ac­quired in­fec­tions at the NICU.

An­oth­er ba­by, the in­fant of Nan­daranie Nathoo, suc­cumbed to the same in­fec­tion in March.

Fol­low­ing pub­lic out­rage, the NWRHA launched an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the Min­istry of Health en­list­ed the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) for an in­de­pen­dent probe.

The PA­HO re­port, sub­mit­ted in June and laid in Par­lia­ment short­ly af­ter, high­light­ed de­fi­cien­cies, in­clud­ing a com­pli­ance rate as low as 29 per cent of ac­cept­ed stan­dards of care, lack of per­son­nel for in­fec­tion pre­ven­tion con­trol, breach­es in pro­tec­tive equip­ment pro­to­cols and se­vere un­der­staffing.

Al­though there were as­sur­ances of trans­paren­cy from NWRHA CEO An­tho­ny Blake, Ray­mond-Adams claims the fam­i­lies of the in­fants have been left in the dark about the find­ings of the in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ray­mond-Adams, through her at­tor­neys, made a for­mal re­quest un­der the FOIA on Ju­ly 21, seek­ing the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port, re­lat­ed state­ments, and de­tails of dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tions and staff ap­point­ments tied to the NICU deaths.

In its re­sponse on Au­gust 21, the NWRHA de­clined to re­lease the doc­u­ments, cit­ing le­gal pro­fes­sion­al priv­i­lege un­der Sec­tion 29 of the FOIA.

It claimed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had evolved in­to a le­gal ex­er­cise af­ter re­ceiv­ing pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters and shield­ed its find­ings from pub­lic dis­clo­sure.

The NWRHA fur­ther stat­ed that no for­mal let­ters of ap­point­ment or terms of ref­er­ence ex­ist­ed for the in­ves­ti­ga­tors, as the in­quiry was con­duct­ed by staff mem­bers act­ing on oral in­struc­tions.

It al­so con­firmed that no dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings had been ini­ti­at­ed against staff in­volved in the in­ci­dents.

The le­gal ac­tion seeks a de­c­la­ra­tion that the NWRHA’s re­fusal to re­lease the doc­u­ments is il­le­gal and a breach of the FOIA. Ray­mond-Adams is re­quest­ing the court to com­pel the re­lease of the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments or to re­mit her FOIA re­quest for re­con­sid­er­a­tion in line with the court’s find­ings.

The NWRHA has yet to com­ment on the le­gal pro­ceed­ings. The mat­ter will be heard in the High Court.