Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishad Seecher­an wants Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to en­sure that a ‘thor­ough and time-bound re­view be con­duct­ed to en­sure there is no re­cur­rence of these gross fail­ures in the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties.”

This fol­lows a High Court rul­ing against the Min­istry of Health for fail­ing to pro­vide spe­cialised health care to a six-year-old Ch­agua­nas boy with birth de­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with the Zi­ka virus.

Seecher­an de­scribed the case is an ex­am­ple of the “law­less­ness” per­pe­trat­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and the lack of care pro­vid­ed to the pub­lic in the health sys­tem.

“The ver­dict of Jus­tice Joan Charles ex­pos­es the chron­ic in­ef­fi­cien­cy in the pub­lic health ec­tor un­der the PNM’s ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Seecher­an said in a re­lease.

“This land­mark judg­ment ex­pos­es gross neg­li­gence as well as the lack of du­ty of care to cit­i­zens ac­cess­ing health­care in the pub­lic health sec­tor un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. Un­doubt­ed­ly, there are many more such un­for­tu­nate ex­am­ples which may have af­fect­ed the lives and even caused the deaths of in­no­cent pa­tients. This typ­i­fies the un­car­ing and ar­ro­gant at­ti­tude to gov­er­nance that ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said res­i­dents in Guayagua­yare are plead­ing for im­proved ac­cess to med­ical care af­ter com­plaints of no am­bu­lance ser­vice in the area and no doc­tors at the Ma­yaro Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

“This comes af­ter tens of mil­lions of ad­di­tion­al funds were al­lo­cat­ed to the Glob­al Med­ical Re­sponse of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the mid-year re­view. Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh demon­strat­ed that he has been un­able to pro­vide qual­i­ty health­care ser­vices in south-east Trinidad de­spite enor­mous sums be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Health,” he said.

On Fri­day, High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit brought against Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice by Ramkissoon-Ra­goo on be­half of her son.

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 said 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 to be cal­cu­lat­ed by a High Court Mas­tere.

She al­so or­dered that the min­istry im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin pro­vid­ing Davyn with the treat­ment he needs and pro­vide on­go­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to his fam­i­ly.