Derek Achong

A High Court Judge is call­ing for an in­de­pen­dent med­ical board to be es­tab­lished to pro­vide ex­pert opin­ions to mem­bers of the pub­lic who may be the vic­tims of med­ical neg­li­gence.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad made the plea in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day, as he ruled in favour of a man who had ap­plied at the last minute to ad­duce ex­pert ev­i­dence in a med­ical neg­li­gence claim for his wife, who re­mains in a med­ical­ly in­duced co­ma since hav­ing com­pli­ca­tions af­ter the birth of the cou­ple's daugh­ter in 2009.

Not­ing that Kr­ish­na Jages­sar had dif­fi­cul­ties in con­vinc­ing lo­cal doc­tors to re­view his wife's case be­fore en­list­ing the help of a Unit­ed States ex­pert, three years af­ter the law­suit was filed, Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed that there is a "cul­ture" among lo­cal doc­tors to band to­geth­er and pro­tect each oth­er.

"There is al­so a ten­den­cy for med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to band to­geth­er and very of­ten there is an un­will­ing­ness by pro­fes­sion­als to ex­press opin­ions that con­demn or crit­i­cise the work of fel­low pro­fes­sion­als," Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so stat­ed that users of the pub­lic health care sys­tem faced "in­her­ent in­jus­tice," as they are like­ly to be un­able to pay to ob­tain for­eign ex­pert ad­vice, thus lead­ing to their law­suits fail­ing.

"There is an ur­gent need for the es­tab­lish­ment of a body, such as a med­ical ex­pert re­view board, that can ob­jec­tive­ly re­view med­ical notes and ad­vance a pre­lim­i­nary opin­ion as to whether or not there was a breach of the req­ui­site stan­dard of care. Such a ser­vice should form part of the pub­lic health care sys­tem," Seep­er­sad said.

While Seep­er­sad stat­ed that Jages­sar had ap­plied out­side the time frame for do­ing so, he said his de­ci­sion to al­low the ev­i­dence nonethe­less would not prej­u­dice the de­fence of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

Ac­cord­ing to his law­suit, Jages­sar's wife, Solange, a pri­ma­ry school teacher, was found un­re­spon­sive at her home on Oc­to­ber 2, 2009, a cou­ple of days af­ter she gave birth to her daugh­ter at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope.

She re­port­ed­ly was suf­fer­ing from un­man­age­able seizures and had to be placed in a med­ical­ly in­duced co­ma.

Tests lat­er showed she was suf­fer­ing from post-par­tum eclamp­sia, which was caused by rem­nants of the ba­by's pla­cen­ta be­ing left in her uterus af­ter birth.

How­ev­er, Jages­sar claims he was told by doc­tors of vary­ing caus­es for his wife's con­di­tion and was in­formed that she had to re­main in a co­ma.

He con­tends that the hos­pi­tal staff act­ed neg­li­gent­ly as they failed to en­sure that she was fit to be dis­charged af­ter she gave birth and al­so in their care of his wife af­ter her sub­se­quent hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion.

"The pa­tient's health has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed con­sid­er­ably over the last few years and she has been re­duced from the phys­i­cal con­di­tion of a healthy young woman to an ema­ci­at­ed state and re­mains in a vir­tu­al veg­e­ta­tive state up to the present time," the law­suit states.

Jages­sar is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion, in­clud­ing for his wife's loss of earn­ing, cost of her con­tin­ued health care not cov­ered by the pub­lic health sys­tem and for the pain, suf­fer­ing and the pain he and his three chil­dren – ages 17, 13 and six – have been suf­fer­ing since her death. The law­suit is set to go on tri­al lat­er this year.

Jages­sar is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Naresh Ram­chan­dani while Neal Bis­nath and Alana Bisses­sar ap­peared for the NCRHA.