EDITORIAL: Trinidad and Tobago’s Health System is Failing, Who’s Going to Fix It?

People in Trinidad and Tobago are dying due to lack of basic healthcare facilities, a factual reality for too many families across this country. Public hospitals are under-resourced, staff is negligent, and people are still being asked to patiently wait for the situation to get better.  

This is not something that just began, it has been growing since past few years but has just deteriorated to levels which are now intolerable. Between 2023 and 2025, Trinidad and Tobago’s public hospitals saw a series of fatal mishaps. 

These incidents paint a grim picture of Trinidad and Tobago’s health sector which is in severe crisis. They are not just tragedies but symptoms of a system that has started to fall and requires immediate attention. Families are losing their loved ones in facilities that are supposed to save lives. 

In April 2024 an infection outbreak at the Port of Spain General Hospital’s neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) killed at least seven premature infants in just four days. Relatives of those suffered alleged that a seriously ill baby was moved into the ward without proper isolation and this led to a deadly cross infection. They described the deaths of the other children, a result of ‘Sheer medical negligence and substandard care.’  

In March 2025, a video from the San Fernando General Hospital went viral showing a mother and a premature baby waiting for assistance from the hospital authorities. The video was shot by the mother’s sister who said that her sister and her baby is being neglected by the staff. She claimed that several calls were made but the hospital authorities did not attend them.  

The incident caused a serious public outrage to which the Southwest Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) responded and said that an internal investigation has been launched, while no further details were disclosed. However, the child was sent for special treatment at the NICU.  

Just a month later, In April 2025, another disturbing incident unfolded at the Mount Hope Women’s Hospital, when a mother went for delivery and had complications delivering naturally which left her baby with lifelong physical damage and mobility issues. The woman claimed that the staff refused her repeated requests for a Caesarean section during a difficult labour.  

She then highlighted that eventually a nurse climbed onto her during the delivery and pulled the baby out of her, which broke the newborn’s arm. The infant then spent days in critical care. He was resuscitated twice and remained seriously injured. The family then called for a thorough investigation and questioned the medical system of the country.  

Last month, at the San Fernando General Hospital, a retired police inspector widely known in her community, Karen Bruce went for a kidney stone surgery, but little she knew that the minor surgery could kill her. The incident led to a national outrage as medical negligence was clearly the cause of death.  

Bruce during the routine medical procedure carried by a urologist encountered a complication, when the urologist accidently perforated her intestines, causing leakage. Although, the situation was immediately handled by general surgeons, the sutures opened after a few days causing the faecal matter to leak into her abdomen causing infection.  

Despite close monitoring and another surgery performed on her intestines Bruce died. The incident highlights the severity of the medical industry in Trinidad and Tobago and underscores the importance of urgent need of reforms into the healthcare industry.  

These are just some of the major incidents, there are several other reports of similar incidents involving medical negligence where doctors or nurses accidently gave wrong medications to the patients risking their lives. Recently, Mericia Ramroop, a mother of six died after she went to a nearby medical clinic due to severe leg pain and received an injection. She died just hours later after frothing started to come out of her mouth.  

The government’s public response is limited, with no to bare minimum investigations or improvements. To date, no hospital managers or doctors have been publicly reprimanded or removed. The NWRHA and SWRHA maintain that it is now premature to blame factors such as equipment shortage or patient fragility as the factors leading to these incidents.  

The truth is that silence and delays have become the major responses to medical failures in Trinidad and Tobago. Investigations are launched, but their findings remain unknown. Families are grieving for answers, but the only thing they face is silence.  

The system is failing and is costing lives. The question is not that what happened, we know that, but the question is “Who is going to fix it, and when will they be held accountable?”