It took sev­en days for Spe­cial Olympic T&T (SOTT) to in­formed Ava Bap­tiste that her daugh­ter, Shan­ice Bap­tiste was hos­pi­talised in Abu Dhabi.

Bap­tiste, 22, sobbed on the phone on Tues­day when she spoke to Ava and her aunt Avril for the first time since she left for the Spe­cial Olympics World Games ear­li­er this month.

Per­son­nel from the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly at their White­land home on Tues­day and con­firmed that Bap­tiste, who was T&T’s boc­ce com­peti­tor, would re­turn to Trinidad on March 28.

Ava said Bap­tiste is a stu­dent of the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties as she is hear­ing im­paired and has to use a hear­ing aid.

While there was talk that SOTT re­turned to Trinidad with­out Bap­tiste, Sport of Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe re­spond­ed on Face­book, de­scrib­ing it as false, fake, mis­lead­ing, care­less and not fun­ny at all.

Cud­joe said: “Spe­cial Olympian Shan­ice Bap­tiste was not for­got­ten in Abu Dhabi. The young ath­lete fell ill and had to be hos­pi­talised. Doc­tors stat­ed she was un­fit to trav­el, so she re­mained along with a coach/care­tak­er. They will re­turn home as soon as they get the clear­ance from the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and the pro­to­cols are worked out with each air­port for safe and smooth tran­sit. I have per­son­al­ly been in con­tact with the fam­i­ly since last week.

“And the SOTT has al­so been in con­tact up to Sun­day. Spe­cial Olympics of­fi­cials in Abu Dhabi, Wash­ing­ton DC and Trinidad and To­ba­go have been col­lab­o­rat­ing close­ly every day up to yes­ter­day. I, like her par­ent and rel­a­tives with whom I have been com­mu­ni­cat­ing, can­not un­der­stand the rea­son for this mis­chief. This is un­for­tu­nate. A lit­tle re­search goes a long way. I am con­fi­dent that we know bet­ter and we can do bet­ter when it comes to re­port­ing the facts to the pub­lic.”

In an in­ter­view, the fam­i­ly con­firmed that Min­istry of­fi­cials have been in con­tact with them, how­ev­er, they felt that there was not enough com­mu­ni­ca­tion as they did not know Bap­tiste was tak­en to hos­pi­tal on March 13.

“The child has been hos­pi­talised since the 13th. They con­tact­ed the moth­er on the 20th. That was the day the team was com­ing back to Trinidad. That is when in­for­ma­tion came to her moth­er that the child would not be on the flight com­ing to Trinidad. That’s when we knew. Pri­or to that, there was no in­for­ma­tion, a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They could have dealt with that sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ent­ly.

“We spoke to Shan­ice about half an hour ago when the of­fi­cials were here. Some­body called and we were able to talk to the child. She is do­ing bet­ter. She sound­ed a lot bet­ter. Emo­tions were all over the place. She was cry­ing, her mom­my was cry­ing, I was cry­ing. I mean, that was the first con­tact. The last con­tact with her was the 12th,” Avril said.

She ex­plained that Bap­tiste was not able to par­tic­i­pate in the games be­cause she suf­fered an asth­ma at­tack and had to use a ven­ti­la­tor to breathe. How­ev­er, she was tak­en off of the ven­ti­la­tor on Tues­day and has been mov­ing around on her own.

“The lord is not the au­thor of con­fu­sion. When we heard what was go­ing on, I said we have to trust God and his pur­pose for her be­ing there. He prob­a­bly al­lowed her to be there so the doc­tors could have prob­a­bly worked with her or run some tests on her and find out some­thing we didn't know here. We have to trust God for that as­pect. We are trust­ing God that things will work out,” Avril said.