The South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) has agreed to pay com­pen­sa­tion to a sev­en-year-old girl, who was left with per­ma­nent neu­ro­log­i­cal in­juries and re­quir­ing life­long care as a re­sult of com­pli­ca­tions with her birth at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Ear­li­er this month, the SWRHA ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty in the med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit brought by the girl and her moth­er, who can­not be iden­ti­fied be­cause she is a mi­nor and due to the na­ture of the case. A judg­ment was en­tered be­fore High Court Judge Karen Reid.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the com­pen­sa­tion would be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter if there is no agree­ment be­tween the par­ties.

The girl was born at the hos­pi­tal in April 2018. One of her limbs was se­vere­ly in­jured while she was be­ing de­liv­ered.

In the law­suit, the fam­i­ly's lawyer Ted Roop­nar­ine claimed that the in­jury was caused by the neg­li­gence of SWRHA, which man­ages the pub­lic hos­pi­tal, and its staff.

"The labour ward's in­ad­e­quate num­ber of mid­wives, cou­pled with staff short­ages that de­layed the com­mence­ment of con­tin­u­ous car­diotocog­ra­phy (CTG) mon­i­tor­ing con­tributed to the fail­ure to prop­er­ly man­age the labour and de­liv­ery," Roop­nar­ine said.

"De­spite the need for ex­pert med­ical in­put, there was no se­nior ob­ste­tri­cian or ex­pe­ri­enced per­son­nel avail­able to pro­vide guid­ance and per­form nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures," he added.

As part of the case, Roop­nar­ine re­lied on the ex­pert opin­ion from a promi­nent British Pro­fes­sor of Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­col­o­gy.

He al­so not­ed that the re­port from an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mis­sioned by the SWRHA al­so sup­port­ed the opin­ion of the for­eign ex­pert wit­ness at­tached to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow in Scot­land.

Through the law­suit, the fam­i­ly sought sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion to cov­er the girl's fu­ture med­ical ex­pens­es in­clud­ing for surg­eries need­ed to im­prove mo­bil­i­ty in her limb.

Roop­nar­ine claimed that the child would be af­fect­ed for the rest of her life as the in­jury would af­fect her fu­ture ca­reer prospects.

"The first claimant will be re­strict­ed in the types of em­ploy­ment she can pur­sue and will like­ly face con­sid­er­able chal­lenges in se­cur­ing and main­tain­ing gain­ful em­ploy­ment," he said.

"This life­long hand­i­cap on the labour mar­ket, cou­pled with the on­go­ing need for med­ical and ther­a­peu­tic in­ter­ven­tions, un­der­scores the sig­nif­i­cant im­pact of the de­fen­dant's ac­tions on her fu­ture eco­nom­ic prospects," he added.

Af­ter the case was filed, the SWRHA sought sev­er­al ex­ten­sions to file its de­fence.

When Jus­tice Reid grant­ed a third ex­ten­sion, she warned that fail­ure to meet the fi­nal dead­line would re­sult in the fam­i­ly be­ing award­ed a de­fault judg­ment.

The SWRHA's le­gal team was led by at­tor­ney Roger Kawals­ingh.