Yes­ter­day was a heart­break­ing day for 21-year-old Danyelle Sama­roo, as it marked two months since she lost her ba­by girl, Aarya Raya, to an in­fec­tious bac­te­ria at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal NICU.

Dur­ing a tear­ful in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Danyelle said that in­stead of cradling her girl while gen­tly singing the hap­py birth­day song, her voice con­tin­ues to be tinged with an­guish.

“I used to speak about that even be­fore she was born, that we would buy cake every month and do what­ev­er we could, even if small, to cel­e­brate her birth­day month­ly. Every­thing has gone out the win­dow and for us we try not to re­al­ly re­mem­ber as much just to aid with our heal­ing process and I know that is not healthy but it breaks us down know­ing that she is not here and we can’t cel­e­brate her life,” she said.

Sama­roo was among a group of par­ents who all lost their pre-term ba­bies with­in a week at the NICU re­port­ed­ly due to the spread of an in­fec­tion. The list of in­fants to have al­leged­ly died due to in­fec­tion has since grown. Head of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, Anand Ram­lo­gan, has trig­gered le­gal ac­tion against both the NWRHA and NCRHA cit­ing med­ical neg­li­gence.

On April 22, a three-mem­ber Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion team of ex­perts ar­rived in the coun­try to be­gin an in­de­pen­dent probe and on April 26, they re­turned to their re­spec­tive ter­ri­to­ries to analyse da­ta sent elec­tron­i­cal­ly up­on re­quest.

There had been con­cerns that lo­cal of­fi­cials may have en­gaged in an at­tempt­ed cov­er-up, but Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh main­tained there was trans­paren­cy through­out the process. How­ev­er, Danyelle said she re­mained dis­ap­point­ed that par­ents were not fac­tored in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“I feel like us be­ing a ma­jor part of it, we should have been part of it and con­tact­ed to be part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and just know­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed and no­body said any­thing to us and we had to find out via the news, it was a bit harsh for us,” she said.

“Re­gard­ing whether I have any hopes of what­ev­er was done, if it will be brought to light, I am hope­ful and I think some­thing can be re­solved from it and that we can get an­swers.” 

Two weeks ago, Deyals­ingh told Guardian me­dia that he had not yet re­ceived any up­date from the in­ves­tiga­tive team.

While state-fund­ed ther­a­py has had its ben­e­fits, Danyelle said that her heart still beats for her ba­by girl.

“I feel like with­out hav­ing full clo­sure, I can’t ac­cept the sit­u­a­tion and move for­ward and ac­tu­al­ly al­low my­self to grieve the way I should be griev­ing be­cause there are so many doubts in my mind so it has been chal­leng­ing and I’ve been try­ing to but its been a roller coast­er.”