Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

A cou­ple is now ex­plor­ing their le­gal op­tions af­ter their one-week-old ba­by girl died at the Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal on March 29.

Jo­hann Leza­ma said his wife Shan­ice Allen-Leza­ma gave birth to their first child, Seren­i­ty, on March 22 but a few days lat­er their joy turned to sor­row when she died due to what they be­lieve may be neg­li­gence on the part of doc­tors at the hos­pi­tal. Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Leza­ma said they knew some­thing went wrong in the de­liv­ery room and weren’t sat­is­fied with the re­sults of the au­top­sy done by the hos­pi­tal.

“We want­ed noth­ing but to have our bun­dle of joy and cre­ate our own fam­i­ly,” he said in a som­bre tone.

“I was in the room from the be­gin­ning of labour un­til the end, so I saw every­thing that has tran­spired...even when I did the first au­top­sy and I had the con­ver­sa­tion with the pathol­o­gist to get the his­to­ry, it is like al­most as though he was al­ready de­fend­ing the doc­tors, so I was not com­fort­able at all with the re­sults be­cause it was very plain and very very vague.”

The ini­tial au­top­sy stat­ed that ba­by Seren­i­ty died due to com­pli­ca­tions of pre­ma­tu­ri­ty.  

“Even when the doc­tors would have said that she died from com­pli­ca­tions ini­tial­ly where her kid­neys stopped func­tion­ing and that was not even men­tioned in the first au­top­sy, that gave us a clear in­di­ca­tion that some­thing was not right,” Leza­ma said.

With their sus­pi­cions aroused, the cou­ple con­duct­ed a sec­ond au­top­sy pri­vate­ly that re­vealed ba­by Seren­i­ty did not die due to pre­ma­tu­ri­ty but from com­pli­ca­tions of a trau­mat­ic breech de­liv­ery. The re­sults re­vealed that the new­born had a trau­mat­ic spinal in­jury, se­vere spinal nerve dam­age, bleed­ing in the brain, liv­er trau­ma and mul­ti­ple in­ter­nal or­gan haem­or­rhages.

“You have to ac­tu­al­ly go now, take out of your pock­et a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey to be able to get the truth, to be able to get prop­er clo­sure, to be able to ful­ly un­der­stand what tran­spired with your own child so you could be able to move on,” he ex­plained. Leza­ma doc­u­ment­ed his wife’s ex­pe­ri­ence at the hos­pi­tal on so­cial me­dia.

In a post that has since gone vi­ral, he said she was ad­mit­ted on March 17 for bleed­ing and two days lat­er (March 19) his wife had a cervix stitch.

“Af­ter surgery, she was placed on com­plete bed rest—but for two days, no doc­tors checked her, de­spite her con­tin­u­ous com­plaints of pain and bleed­ing. On­ly nurs­es were ad­min­is­ter­ing an­tibi­otics,” he claimed on so­cial me­dia.

On March 22 at 27 weeks preg­nant, he said Shan­ice’s wa­ter broke at 3.30 am.  

“I was present in the room from start to fin­ish. Seren­i­ty got stuck in the birth canal from her waist to her head for over 25 min­utes. As more time passed, the doc­tors be­gan to pan­ic and start­ed pulling hard­er to get her out,” he claimed.

Even with the post, Leza­ma said he nei­ther nor his wife have been con­tact­ed by the Min­istry of Health nor the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

Guardian Me­dia tried con­tact­ing Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas and Di­rec­tor of Women’s Health Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh yes­ter­day but got no re­spons­es up to press time.

Leza­ma said he and his wife shared their sto­ry so no oth­er par­ent has to feel what they have en­dured and con­tin­ue to be af­fect­ed by.

Lit­tle Seren­i­ty was laid to rest on April 9.