Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The State in­tends to ap­peal Fri­day's High Court judg­ment which ruled that the Min­istry failed to pro­vide spe­cialised health care to a six-year-old boy from Ch­agua­nas with birth de­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with the Zi­ka virus and or­dered the State to pay sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion.

The rev­e­la­tion came from Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, in a brief com­ment to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Fri­day, High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit brought against Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the Min­istry of Health's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice by Kavi­ta Ramkissoon-Ra­goo on be­half of her son, Davyn, who was born in 2017 with Mi­cro­cephaly from the Zi­ka virus.

Jus­tice Charles ruled that Deyals­ingh and the Min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary breached their du­ties un­der the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties Act by fail­ing to im­ple­ment com­pre­hen­sive guide­lines and pro­to­cols for treat­ing Davyn and oth­er chil­dren like him.

She al­so stat­ed that it con­sti­tut­ed a breach of the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child (UN­CRC) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (UN­CR­PD). Jus­tice Charles ruled that the Min­istry's fail­ure to pro­vide ur­gent and spe­cialised care to Davyn breached his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to life and or­dered that he and his fam­i­ly re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion in­clud­ing ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages, which are to be cal­cu­lat­ed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

She al­so or­dered that the Min­istry take im­me­di­ate steps to be­gin pro­vid­ing Davyn with the treat­ment he needs and to pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to his fam­i­ly on an on­go­ing ba­sis.