A pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion in San Fer­nan­do has lost its bid to cen­sor the so­cial me­dia posts of an at­tor­ney, who is claim­ing that she suf­fered a ra­di­a­tion over­dose dur­ing a rou­tine CT scan.

De­liv­er­ing a nine-page de­ci­sion in the Port-of-Spain High Court on Mon­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad par­tial­ly re­moved the in­junc­tion against Cher­ry-Ann Ra­jku­mar, which was ob­tained by South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic Lim­it­ed, its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Ru­pert In­dar and di­rec­tor Rom­ney Thomas, last week.

Seep­er­sad ruled that an in­ter­im in­junc­tion was not jus­ti­fied, as the clin­ic’s dis­pute with Ra­jku­mar over the treat­ment she re­ceived in June, last year, could on­ly be re­solved at the tri­al of their defama­tion case.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that the clin­ic and In­dar may file for an in­junc­tion at a lat­er stage when the court can con­sid­er Ra­jku­mar’s de­fence to mak­ing what they claim are un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions against them.

In re­la­tion to Thomas, Seep­er­sad ruled that the in­junc­tion should stand as Ra­jku­mar’s ac­tion in protest­ing out­side of his pri­vate law cham­bers was un­rea­son­able. Thomas is al­so cur­rent­ly the chair­man of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Ra­jku­mar un­der­went the CT scan on June 11, last year.

She claimed that with­in two hours of the pro­ce­dure she be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms which in­clud­ed burns to her face, pain, weak­ness and se­vere hair loss. She was lat­er di­ag­nosed with a ra­di­a­tion over­dose by med­ical physi­cist Dr David Evans and a ra­di­a­tion on­col­o­gist.

The in­sti­tu­tion de­nied any wrong­do­ing and stat­ed that its equip­ment and staff were cer­ti­fied and ap­proved by the Min­istry of Health. It al­so claimed that the side ef­fects claimed by Ra­jku­mar were not con­sis­tent with a ra­di­a­tion over­dose.

A let­ter from the Min­istry of Health Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram to the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the South­ern Med­ical Ser­vices said a re­view had been done by Dr Para­manand Ma­haraj, head of the Ra­di­ol­o­gy Ser­vices at the Er­ic Williams Ser­vices Com­plex, in light of Ra­jku­mar’s com­plaint, found the ra­di­a­tion dose was “with­in nor­mal lim­its.”

Ma­haraj stat­ed: “It is al­most im­pos­si­ble for a pa­tient to be over-ra­di­at­ed for a rou­tine CT scan of the bri­an as Di­ag­nos­tic X-rays tubes are not ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing such harm­ful rays for the usu­al scan du­ra­tion of less than 5 sec­onds.”

He sug­gest­ed that Ra­jku­mar seek al­ter­na­tive ex­pla­na­tions for her signs and symp­toms.

Ra­jku­mar al­leged­ly be­gan post­ing in­for­ma­tion on her Face­book pages af­ter the clin­ic re­port­ed­ly re­fused to hand over da­ta logs from its CT scan ma­chine. Ra­jku­mar is claim­ing that she needs the in­for­ma­tion for her doc­tors to tai­lor their treat­ment for her.

Seep­er­sad ques­tioned the fail­ure to dis­close the in­for­ma­tion in his pre­lim­i­nary de­ci­sion.

“The court al­so finds it dif­fi­cult, at this stage, to un­der­stand the hes­i­tan­cy with re­spect to the in­for­ma­tion sought rel­a­tive to the equip­ment and there may ex­ist an un­fet­tered right by all pa­tients at med­ical in­sti­tu­tions, whether pub­lic or pri­vate, to be pro­vid­ed with all in­for­ma­tion rel­a­tive to the treat­ment which was af­ford­ed to them,” he said.

The clin­ic and its di­rec­tors were rep­re­sent­ed by Faa­rees Ho­sein and Melis­sa Sinanan, while Ra­jku­mar rep­re­sent­ed her­self. The mat­ter re­sumes next Wednes­day.