The par­ents of a four-year-old boy, who died at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex in Mt Hope af­ter be­ing placed un­der gen­er­al anaes­the­sia for a mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) scan, have threat­ened to sue for med­ical neg­li­gence and wrong­ful death. 

Lawyers for Ish­war Clement and Abena Sim­mons-Clement made the le­gal threat on Wednes­day in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), which over­sees the pub­lic med­ical fa­cil­i­ty. 

The cou­ple’s son, Ay­den, was born on De­cem­ber 13, 2020. 

On March 26, 2025, he was ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal af­ter com­plain­ing of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing low­er limb pain and swelling of his knees. 

He was kept at the hos­pi­tal for three weeks as he un­der­went mul­ti­ple di­ag­nos­tic tests, in­clud­ing X-rays, ul­tra­sounds, blood tests and an ini­tial MRI un­der se­da­tion. 

The par­ents claimed that on April 17, he un­der­went an­oth­er MRI with­out his moth­er be­ing present or giv­ing her per­mis­sion. 

Af­ter be­ing se­dat­ed and in­tu­bat­ed, the child suf­fered cat­a­stroph­ic hy­poten­sion—al­so known as car­dio­vas­cu­lar col­lapse—which is a se­vere and sud­den drop in blood pres­sure.

Doc­tors spent al­most an hour at­tempt­ing to re­sus­ci­tate him be­fore he died. 

His of­fi­cial death cer­tifi­cate list­ed five caus­es of death—hy­poten­sion, sep­sis, bi­lat­er­al hematoge­nous os­teomyelitis, heart fail­ure, and an en­larged brain. 

In the let­ter, the cou­ple’s lawyer, Jo­han­na Richards, of Sov­er­eign Cham­bers, chal­lenged the find­ings on the cer­tifi­cate. 

“These pur­port­ed caus­es do not re­flect the prox­i­mate and acute cause of death, that be­ing, a trau­mat­ic in­tu­ba­tion re­sult­ing in haem­or­rhage, hy­po­v­olemic shock, and car­diac ar­rest based on post-anaes­the­sia notes and clin­i­cal ob­ser­va­tions doc­u­ments,” Richards said. 

“In oth­er words, clear­ly some­thing went se­ri­ous­ly wrong and/or was neg­li­gent with re­spect to the in­tu­ba­tion process,” she added. 

Richards said that the NCRHA’s staff were neg­li­gent in seek­ing to per­form the sec­ond MRI with­out a jus­ti­fi­able med­ical ba­sis and in seek­ing to do so with­out the con­sent of the child’s par­ents. 

“Ay­den’s par­ents were nev­er kept in­formed of his progress, nor were the in­her­ent risks of var­i­ous treat­ments and pro­ce­dures ever ex­plained to them to en­able in­formed de­ci­sion mak­ing with re­spect to their son,” Richards said. 

Richards gave the NCRHA 28 days in which to re­spond with an ex­pla­na­tion and an of­fer of re­dress be­fore a case is filed seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion for the pain and suf­fer­ing en­dured by Ay­den be­fore his death and his par­ents af­ter it. 

The cou­ple is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Chinele Ram­rat­tan.