The list of ba­bies who died re­cent­ly at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) in the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH), due to a sus­pect­ed bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion, con­tin­ued to grow yes­ter­day as lawyers iden­ti­fied three oth­ers, bring­ing the cur­rent run­ning to­tal to 11.

The lat­est sus­pect­ed cas­es were iden­ti­fied by at­tor­neys of Free­dom Law Cham­bers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan SC in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent yes­ter­day to at­tor­ney Alana Bisses­sar, of Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide and Jacelon, which is rep­re­sent­ing the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA).

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­ney Sue Ann De­osaran iden­ti­fied San­gre Grande cou­ple Farah Rat­tans­ingh and Christo­pher Bha­gan, whose twins Amari and Kyrie Bha­gan died with­in days of each oth­er in late Feb­ru­ary.

She al­so point­ed out that par­ents Jodie and Travis Moli­no, who were among the sev­en af­fect­ed fam­i­lies ac­knowl­edged by the Min­istry of Health last week, in fact al­so had a pair of twins, El­la and Esme Moli­no, who died with­in weeks of each oth­er at the hos­pi­tal on March 18 and April 4.

The oth­er par­ents have been iden­ti­fied as Shaniya Ray­mond-Adams/Ker­ron Charles, Shirse Moore-Beck­les/ Ron­dell Beck­les, Danyelle Sama­roo/Avinash Chater­goon, Tinelle Saun­ders/Gus Williams, Shaquille Har­ry/Kadeem Williams, Natasha Samuel/Brent Wil­son, and Nan­daranie Nathoo/Al­lis­ter Pierre.

De­osaran sought to ex­plain why the list of po­ten­tial claimants in a pro­posed class ac­tion med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit rose and may con­tin­ue to rise.

“As pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed, sev­er­al par­ents have con­tact­ed us with hor­ror sto­ries about the way they were treat­ed at the PoS­GH and the death of their ba­bies. We shall con­tin­ue to is­sue more pre-ac­tion let­ters when we are fin­ished in­ter­view­ing these clients,” she said.

Like in the pre­vi­ous pre-ac­tion let­ters sent on be­half of four fam­i­lies, De­osaran gave a syn­op­sis of what tran­spired with Rat­tans­ingh and Bha­gan’s twins Amari and Kyrie.

The twins were born pre­ma­ture­ly at 28 weeks ges­ta­tion at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal on Jan­u­ary 6 and were sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to the PoS­GH. Up­on be­ing ad­mit­ted to the PoS­GH NICU, Kyrie was placed on in­tu­ba­tion to help him breathe. Af­ter a few weeks, med­ical staff be­gan to wean him off the breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus, as his con­di­tion ap­peared to im­prove.

De­osaran claimed he was briefly placed back on in­tu­ba­tion af­ter the par­ents were told he had a high con­cen­tra­tion of car­bon diox­ide in his body. She claimed that on Feb­ru­ary 20, the cou­ple no­ticed their ba­by was “look­ing down”. Dur­ing a vis­it the fol­low­ing day, the cou­ple found him with tubes down his throat and cov­ered in plas­tic.

“Our client in­structs that she saw her ba­by look­ing yel­low and in a daze, and Farah and Chris then grew in­creas­ing­ly wor­ried, as they were not cer­tain what was tak­ing place with their ba­by,” De­osaran said.

She claimed the cou­ple was told their ba­by may have had an in­fec­tion and tests were be­ing con­duct­ed. They were re­port­ed­ly told this was “to­tal­ly nor­mal” for pre­ma­ture ba­bies and they should not wor­ry.

The fol­low­ing day when they ar­rived at the hos­pi­tal, they saw doc­tors at­tempt­ing to re­sus­ci­tate Kyrie. He died sev­er­al hours lat­er.

While the cou­ple was griev­ing at the hos­pi­tal, they were asked when they would be pick­ing up his body be­cause it could not be kept for more than three hours.

“To this day, these words still echo in Farah and Chris’ ears, and haunt them, as they could not be­lieve that they would have so cal­lous­ly dis­missed. Noth­ing could jus­ti­fy such a cold-heart­ed and heart­less re­sponse,” De­osaran said.

Deal­ing with Kyrie’s broth­er Amari, De­osaran said he did not need help breath­ing when he was ad­mit­ted to the NICU. Two weeks lat­er, the cou­ple was told he may have got­ten an in­fec­tion.

The fol­low­ing day, they were called to a meet­ing with a doc­tor and in­formed that he had been ac­ci­den­tal­ly fed breast milk from an­oth­er moth­er by a nurse. The next day, they were told Amari had an in­fec­tion and the bac­te­ria was “Kleb­siel­la”.

She claimed Amari briefly re­cov­ered be­fore suf­fer­ing a re­lapse al­most a week lat­er. On Feb­ru­ary 26, Farah no­ticed blood com­ing from a tube in his chest and was told this was nor­mal. Lat­er that day, he had a seizure and died sev­er­al hours lat­er.

De­osaran claimed the cou­ple ini­tial­ly found so­lace in at­tribut­ing the deaths of their sons to their pre­ma­ture birth. She said the cou­ple, who are co-work­ers, had to seek coun­selling through their em­ploy­er, as they were not con­tact­ed by a NWRHA so­cial work­er as promised.

De­osaran said the com­mon thread amongst their clients was that they were all sub­ject­ed to “hos­tile, hog­gish, and un­pro­fes­sion­al” be­hav­iour from hos­pi­tal staff.

“This is an area that must be ur­gent­ly re­viewed to pre­vent such cru­el and in­hu­mane treat­ment of pa­tients who are tax-pay­ing cit­i­zens.”

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed the deaths of sev­en of the in­fants be­tween April 4 and 7 and said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was be­ing con­duct­ed by the Of­fice of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cers. He sub­se­quent­ly said the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) was in­vit­ed to con­duct an in­de­pen­dent probe.