A landmark High Court ruling has delivered a sharp rebuke to Trinidad and Tobago’s North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA), finding the public body improperly hid behind legal professional privilege to avoid releasing records related to the 2024 deaths of seven newborns at Port of Spain General Hospital, and failed to uphold its own mandatory investigation policies.
The tragedy unfolded in April 2024, when a bacterial outbreak swept through the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), claiming the lives of seven premature and vulnerable infants. Among the victims was Kae’ Jhene Kerniah Charles, born prematurely at 32 weeks to Shanya Raymond-Adams. The infant was admitted to the NICU immediately after birth, appeared initially stable, but developed a life-threatening blood infection and died just five days later, on April 6. Weeks after her death, Raymond-Adams learned via an NWRHA media statement that her daughter was one of seven babies who died in the outbreak between April 2 and 9.
Following the public outcry over the deaths, the NWRHA launched an internal investigation under its own Adverse Events Policy, with then-CEO Anthony Blake publicly promising full transparency and disclosure of the investigation’s findings. When Raymond-Adams filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the internal investigative report, witness statements, and the investigation’s terms of reference in July 2024, however, the NWRHA refused to release any records. The authority argued the documents were protected from disclosure by legal professional privilege, claiming the investigation had shifted to primarily preparing for expected litigation from bereaved families.
In a 65-page judgment delivered Thursday, Justice Robin Mohammed rejected the NWRHA’s claims entirely, ruling the authority’s refusal to disclose was illegal and breached the FOIA. Justice Mohammed found the NWRHA failed to produce any credible, contemporaneous evidence – including meeting minutes, file notes, or formal resolutions – to support its assertion that the investigation’s core purpose had changed from examining the outbreak to preparing legal defense. Without this supporting documentation, the judge ruled the authority’s reliance on privilege was “a construct of convenience” designed to evade its statutory transparency obligations.
The ruling also exposed critical failures in the NWRHA’s internal investigation itself. Justice Mohammed confirmed the authority failed to interview the bereaved mothers of the deceased infants, a direct violation of Section 12.6.3 of its own Adverse Events Policy, which explicitly requires investigators to collect statements from patients or their next of kin. The judge emphasized that even if the authority claimed the investigation was being conducted for legal purposes, this did not eliminate its statutory and internal policy obligation to conduct a full, impartial probe into the deaths. This failure to collect firsthand accounts from affected families, he found, amounted to a clear breach of the NWRHA’s own policies.
Justice Mohammed also addressed the NWRHA’s attempts to discredit an independent investigation conducted by a three-member team from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), which was presented to Trinidad and Tobago’s Parliament in June 2024. That report uncovered alarming systemic failures at the hospital: it found compliance with basic infection control standards was as low as 29%, documented chronic understaffing, and confirmed the hospital had no dedicated staff assigned to infection prevention and control. The NWRHA criticized the PAHO report’s findings, but Justice Mohammed ruled the authority produced no substantive evidence to undermine the independent assessment.
In his final analysis, Justice Mohammed noted that public interest in disclosure far outweighs the NWRHA’s claims to confidentiality. The internal report remains the only authoritative internal assessment of the outbreak, and bereaved families like Raymond-Adams are entirely dependent on the authority for information on whether systemic failures or medical lapses contributed to their children’s deaths. The judge added that the NWRHA’s ongoing lack of transparency, in the face of evidence of potential neglect, harm to vulnerable infants, and injustice to grieving families, has only compounded public anxiety over the incident.
Justice Mohammed quashed the NWRHA’s original decision to withhold the documents, ordered the authority to release all requested records to Raymond-Adams (with only limited, appropriate redactions if permitted), and ruled the NWRHA must pay all of Raymond-Adams’s legal costs for the judicial review challenge. Six other families of the deceased newborns have also filed separate legal action against the NWRHA, and Thursday’s ruling sets a critical precedent for their demands for transparency and accountability.
Senior Counsel Anand Ramlogan led the legal team representing Raymond-Adams, supported by attorneys Jayanti Lutchmedial, Kent Samlal, Jared Jagroo, Natasha Bisram and Aasha Ramlal. The NWRHA was represented by Senior Counsel Ravindra Nanga, Stephan Maharaj and Alana Bissessar.