SENIOR Counsel Anand Ramlogan has called on the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) to negotiate settlements with the families of seven newborns who died during a bacterial outbreak at the Port of Spain General Hospital in April 2024, accusing the authority of spending public money fighting grieving mothers instead of providing answers and compensation.
In a statement following Thursday’s High Court ruling ordering the release of the NWRHA’s internal investigative report into the deaths, Ramlogan urged the authority to stop spending public funds on legal fees to resist the mothers’ claims and engage their attorneys to pursue fair and prompt settlements.
“No settlement can restore a child’s life or erase a mother’s grief. It can, however, provide compensation and spare these families the additional suffering of prolonged litigation,” he said.
Ramlogan represented Shanya Raymond-Adams in her successful legal challenge to the NWRHA’s refusal to disclose the report. He described the authority’s decision to withhold its findings as a travesty of justice.
He said the mothers had been forced to pursue the very institution entrusted with caring for their babies to obtain information about the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
“It is scandalous and outrageous that to date the grieving mothers have not received one red cent whilst the NWRHA dragged this matter out in the courts for the past two years,” he said.
Ramlogan also called for those responsible for the decisions to withhold the report to be held accountable, arguing that suppressing an investigation into the newborns’ deaths could not be justified.
He highlighted what he described as a contradiction between the NWRHA’s public assurances of transparency and its subsequent efforts to prevent disclosure of the findings.
The authority’s then-chief executive officer, Anthony Blake, publicly promised in April 2024 that the investigation’s findings would be disclosed. Blake later swore an affidavit opposing Raymond-Adams’ application for the documents, as the NWRHA relied on legal professional privilege to justify withholding them.
Ramlogan described the authority’s actions as hypocritical, saying the mothers had reasonably relied on its promise of openness while grieving the loss of their children.
He pointed to Justice Robin Mohammed’s finding that the NWRHA had failed to provide sufficient documentation to support its claim that the report was protected by legal professional privilege.
Ramlogan said the findings raised serious questions about why the NWRHA had chosen to engage in a prolonged court battle rather than honour its commitment to transparency.
He urged the NWRHA to comply promptly with the disclosure order and make the investigative findings public, subject to any necessary redactions to protect confidential personal information.
“The families and the country deserve to know what the investigation established about why these babies died, what went wrong and what has been done to prevent a recurrence,” he said.
Ramlogan said the mothers had endured years of grief while seeking answers and justice.
“The truth about these deaths must be made known. These mothers have waited long enough,” Ramlogan said.
Trinidad Express
