The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) has been ordered to pay millions in damages after the Supreme Court found that the facility “fell below the standard of care” expected of it and also “breached the duty of care” provided to a 16-year-old girl, who died six days after being admitted to the hospital in March 2018.

The girl’s parents later sued the hospital’s board of management for failing to “use all proper professional skill, care, competence, and diligence during their investigation, diagnosis, management, and treatment of their only child”.

The court on Friday awarded $1,687,380.19 “for pain and suffering” endured by the child prior to her death. For loss of life/loss of expectation of life, the court awarded $344,127.70 with interest at three per cent per annum from April 15, 2021 to July 31 this year. In assessing how much the child, who was described as “a perennial high achiever” and a “polyglot” (a person who knows, speaks, or writes several different languages) would have lost in terms of earnings from before the trial to the last hearing date the court awarded $6 million. In satisfying the parent’s claims for special damages, the court awarded $975,573.41 plus interest of three per cent per annum, from the date she died to the date the judgement was handed down. It also awarded US$8,000 in respect of the report prepared by the expert witness relied on in the case.

The teenager who was described as “an accomplished and promising fifth-form student at Campion College, St Andrew” was preparing to sit the May/June sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Examination Council (CSEC) examinations at the time of her passing. She was said to have “entrepreneurial dreams and aspirations to become a scientist or a medical researcher”.

According to the civil negligence and estate lawsuit filed by her parents in the civil division of the Supreme Court in 2021, the young girl, on or around March 30, 2018 was admitted by the UHWI for treatment at its medical facility. Her mother said the ordeal began on March 27, 2018 when her daughter complained of what had become a persistent headache. She said after being examined by the family doctor, her daughter — who had also been warm to the touch — was prescribed medication. When that headache persisted three days later, along with weakness the parents — who said they began to “suspect that their daughter was suffering from another bout of meningitis, an illness with which she had been diagnosed at the age of eight years” — decided to take her to the UHWI.

Once there, they said they informed medical staff of her symptoms and history of meningitis as well as their suspicions. The parents said on March 31 after blood samples, a CT scan and an unsuccessful lumbar puncture procedure (which was to be done over), they were informed that their daughter was suffering from hemiplegic migraine. After some 18 seizures and two heart attacks, the teen who had also been placed on life support was pronounced dead on April 5, 2018.

Unmoored and set adrift by the loss of their child, the parents asserted that they suffered emotional and psychiatric distress. The father alleged that he became unable to focus, depressed and angry, making it difficult for him to hold onto a job. His wife maintained that, as a sales manager, the mental distress caused by, and the toll of, her daughter’s death affected her so drastically that she could not do her job as well as she did before.

According to court documents two medical professionals who gave evidence on behalf of the hospital maintained that the UHWI and its medical teams acted in accordance with standard practices and that there were no actions of negligence in the diagnosis, treatment and/or management of the teen.

However the court, in choosing to rely on the evidence of an expert witness called by the parents, said there were “aspects of negligence on the part of the UHWI, which are of great concern”.

“The documentary evidence discloses that, during the course of [her] admission to the UHWI, it was noted on three separate occasions that a diagnosis of meningitis was to be ruled out… in fact, it is readily apparent from the medical docket that no further attempt was made to rule out or to exclude the differential diagnosis of meningitis. This court is of the view that there is an absolute need for a physician to ensure that sufficient tests and detailed investigations are conducted before ruling out one disease over another. Negligence must be ascribed to the UHWI, by its servants and/or agents, for its failure to properly employ all usual diagnostic aids in ruling out the possibility of meningitis, including a lumbar puncture test,” the court said.

“The court finds that the UHWI was negligent in the failure on the part of its servants and/or agents to recognise that [name withheld] was brain-dead on 1 April 2018 at 11:00 pm. The evidence of the rapid deterioration in [the child’s] condition in the five days following her admission to the UHWI is concerning,” said the ruling handed down by Supreme Court Justice Anne-Marie Nembhard.

“The court finds that there was no clear plan of treatment, on the part of the servants and/or agents of the UHWI, to treat [her] in the face of her rapid deterioration, whilst being admitted as a patient to the UHWI. Nor does there seem to have been a corresponding, commensurate escalation in the UHWI’s plan of treatment or course of treatment in the face of her rapid deterioration,” the justice added.

In additional findings, the court said based on the evidence of the expert witness, an accurate diagnosis could have been arrived at, had a lumbar puncture been performed.