DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A woman from south Trinidad has threat­ened to pur­sue a med­ical neg­li­gence case over the death of her son, who died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal two weeks af­ter be­ing born pre­ma­ture­ly at a lit­tle over 24 weeks ear­li­er this year.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that last week, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the woman, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held based on the na­ture of the case and the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma she con­tin­ues to en­dure, wrote the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) chief ex­ec­u­tive Dr Bri­an Ar­mour threat­en­ing lit­i­ga­tion over what tran­spired.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, the woman’s lawyer Ted Roop­nar­ine al­leged that his client and her now-de­ceased son were sub­ject­ed to “in­hu­mane, de­grad­ing and med­ical­ly neg­li­gent treat­ment”.

On March 12, the moth­er was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal af­ter suf­fer­ing a flu­id leak.

Al­though she was found to have suf­fered a rup­ture to her am­ni­ot­ic mem­brane through an ul­tra­sound, she was not trans­ferred to the labour ward but rather to a gen­er­al area used for women suf­fer­ing from fi­broids and mis­car­riages.

The woman was even­tu­al­ly dis­charged on March 15 but was forced to re­turn to the hos­pi­tal four days lat­er as her con­di­tion wors­ened.

She was again dis­charged but was brought back in an am­bu­lance af­ter rel­a­tives made an emer­gency call.

The woman was dropped off in the labour ward but was trans­ferred to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment.

She was re­port­ed­ly not ex­am­ined by a doc­tor for sev­er­al hours but was as­sist­ed by one when she even­tu­al­ly gave birth the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

Roop­nar­ine claimed hos­pi­tal staff in­formed the moth­er that they would not be able to of­fer any treat­ment for her ba­by as he was born at 24 weeks and four days.

They pur­port­ed­ly re­ferred to an in­ter­nal pol­i­cy un­der which on­ly ba­bies born be­tween 26 to 28 weeks are el­i­gi­ble for treat­ment due to the al­leged high costs and risks as­so­ci­at­ed with treat­ing ba­bies who were born pre­ma­ture.

De­spite their al­leged claims, hos­pi­tal staff still even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred the ba­by to the hos­pi­tal’s Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) two hours af­ter his birth.

The woman was then told that hos­pi­tal staff would on­ly be able to at­tempt to treat her ba­by 12 hours af­ter the trans­fer.

He claimed that in the NICU, the ba­by re­port­ed­ly suf­fered from ex­ces­sive bleed­ing, al­leged­ly due to IV han­dling, and a sig­nif­i­cant de­lay in es­ca­la­tion of care de­spite dis­play­ing clear dis­tress signs.

He al­so con­tend­ed that the ba­by was not fed for three days dur­ing a pe­ri­od of in­ter­nal bleed­ing, with a blood trans­fu­sion on­ly ad­min­is­tered a day be­fore he even­tu­al­ly died on April 4.

Roop­nar­ine al­so point­ed out that the hos­pi­tal’s pur­port­ed pol­i­cy on treat­ing pre­ma­ture ba­bies con­tra­vened guide­lines for such de­vel­oped by sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Roop­nar­ine al­so claimed that his client and her rel­a­tives were blocked from at­tempt­ing to pray for the ba­by in the NICU.

Roop­nar­ine al­so took is­sue with the SWRHA’s han­dling of an in­ci­dent in which a video of the woman while amid the trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence was shared on so­cial me­dia.

He not­ed that in­stead of seek­ing to probe the leak, the SWRHA is­sued a press re­lease ac­cus­ing the woman and her rel­a­tives of breach­ing its pri­va­cy poli­cies.

Through the pro­posed law­suit, the woman is seek­ing an in­de­pen­dent probe, a full apol­o­gy, coun­selling as well as sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion.