Rishard Khan

Re­porter

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The State in­tends to ap­peal Fri­day’s High Court judge­ment which found that the Min­istry of Health failed to pro­vide spe­cialised health care to a six-year-old Ch­agua­nas boy with birth de­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with the Zi­ka virus. This was re­vealed by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh who com­ment­ed briefly on the mat­ter yes­ter­day

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, for­mer Chief of Staff at the Mt Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal and pres­i­dent of the Zi­ka Foun­da­tion Dr Karen So­han said she was dis­ap­point­ed that the state is choos­ing to use tax­pay­er funds to ap­peal the case in­stead of pro­vid­ing Zi­ka-af­fect­ed chil­dren and their fam­i­lies with the help they need.

“The judg­ment de­liv­ered by Jus­tice Charles was com­pre­hen­sive and clear and I am cer­tain it will be up­held in the court of ap­peal,” So­han said.

“One of the things the fam­i­lies al­ways men­tioned was the lack of sup­port. They felt aban­doned and again we are go­ing through this same thing. As I said, it’s very un­for­tu­nate and it’s an­oth­er blow to the fam­i­lies.”

Guardian Me­dia is cur­rent­ly await­ing sta­tis­tics on Zi­ka and ba­bies af­fect­ed by the dis­ease. How­ev­er, Dr So­han doubts that the fig­ures will be com­pre­hen­sive due to dif­fi­cul­ties in track­ing these types of cas­es. She said there are at least 20 fam­i­lies with the Foun­da­tion who had births af­fect­ed by the virus.

“Since this rul­ing that in­volved a sin­gle fam­i­ly, we’ve had many of the fam­i­lies reach out to us be­cause, of course, they were hope­ful that this meant their chil­dren were go­ing to get the health­care and the spe­cial equip­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly the things to help with walk­ing and mo­bil­i­ty. They are go­ing to be very, very dis­heart­ened,” she said.

High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit brought by Kavi­ta Ramkissoon-Ra­goo on be­half of her son 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 said it con­sti­tut­ed a breach of T&T’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 will be cal­cu­lat­ed by a High Court Mas­ter. She al­so or­dered that the min­istry be­gin pro­vid­ing Davyn with the treat­ment he needs and pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to his fam­i­ly.