Seven sets of parents, whose babies died of neonatal sepsis over four days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the Port-of-Spain General Hospital (PoSGH), may not attend a meeting with North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) officials today. However, there is also confusion over whether the meeting will take place at all.
In a letter to NWRHA chief executive Anthony Blake, the group’s lawyers, led by Anand Ramlogan, SC, of Freedom Law Chambers, indicated they would not attend the meeting with their client unless they are provided with details about it.
“We wish to make it abundantly clear that we will not be attending any meeting with our clients unless you provide answers to the aforementioned questions we have raised about the nature and purpose of this meeting,” they said.
Besides the purpose and proposed agenda, the group’s lawyers asked who would be in attendance, whether it will be recorded and if they (the lawyers) would be allowed to accompany their clients.
The group’s lawyers pointed out that the NWRHA had not responded to pre-action protocol letters sent over the weekend on behalf of the mothers of two of the babies - Shaniya Raymond-Adams and Sherise Moore-Beckles. The other parents are Natasha Samuel, Shaquille Harry, Danyelle Samaroo, Tinelle Saunders and Jodie Molino.
Noting that the letters were served on the authority’s legal unit via email, they said “barring the worst form of maladministration”, it was unlikely the pre-action letters had not come to the NWRHA executive’s attention.
They complained that the NWRHA invited their clients to the meeting although they signalled their intention to file a class action lawsuit.
“The action and/or conduct of the NWRHA in bypassing our clients’ legal representatives and continuing to try and communicate with our clients directly is highly suspicious and improper, if not unethical,” they said.
“It has caused unnecessary and avoidable confusion and intensified the distress our clients are experiencing while they are grieving for the loss of their babies.”
The lawyers renewed calls for the NWRHA to release their clients’ medical records and notes, as they suggested they had concerns based on delays in disclosure.
“We appreciate and understand our clients’ fears and anxieties on this issue because we are involved in medical negligence cases in which we have reason to believe that the medical notes and records were doctored and changed. In other cases, the entire file containing the patient’s medical notes and records mysteriously vanished,” they added.
In the letter, Ramlogan and his team sought to detail what happened to Samaroo’s daughter, Aarya Raya Chattergoon.
Samaroo was admitted to the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital on March 22 but transferred to the PoSGH due to limited space in the former’s NICU.
Samaroo, who was 34 weeks’ pregnant at the time, started pre-term labour and her daughter was delivered via caesarean section. Several days later, doctors told Samaroo and her husband they needed to conduct a blood transfusion due to improper digestion of food by the child.
The procedure was conducted after Samaroo paid $800 for a blood filter, as the hospital did not have any. Her baby eventually died in her arms on April 5.
The lawyers claimed the parents were only informed that her daughter had an infection after her death. They claimed a staff member attempted to pacify the parents by telling them that such infections were “completely natural” and provided a refund for the filter.
“The staff appeared casual, emotionless and as if it was just another ordinary day of business as usual and as if the baby’s death was not a big deal,” they said.
In the legal correspondence, the group’s lawyers claimed the NWRHA was negligent by failing to provide a clean and safe environment and by risking the safety of other babies in the NICU by putting a baby with a serious infection there without mitigating against spread.
Although the lawyers said they would be seeking general, special, aggravated and exemplary damages, it did not quantify the compensation being sought.
The lawyers are expected to send individual pre-action protocol letters on behalf of their four remaining clients, as their cases will have to be filed separately before a judge decides whether they can be joined for the proposed class-action lawsuit.
The attorneys have said they may add more clients to the case after considering information being provided to them by people who may have also been affected.
Last Friday, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh apologised to the parents of the babies, who died between April 4 and 7. He said their deaths came despite the NWRHA following stringent control practices.
“Immediately upon recognising the seriousness of the situation, existing escalated protocols were initiated by the NWRHA. These included, inter alia, rigorous sanitisation and sterilisation. I am advised that senior doctors and nurses were present, providing care to the neonates, and parents were regularly updated on their babies’ condition,” he told Parliament.
The families are also being represented by Sharon Ramnarine and Sue Ann Deosaran.