The Children’s Life Fund Authority has agreed to consider and decide on the case of a four-year-old girl from south Trinidad, who has to undergo a critical bone marrow transplant in India to treat a blood disorder, within 24 hours.
The authority gave the commitment to the family of Haleema Mohammed hours after her mother Kristal yesterday filed a lawsuit challenging its previous claim, filed in June, that it would take between one and three months to consider her application.
Mohammed is scheduled to undergo the operation at the Fortis Memorial Institute for Allogeneic Transplant in Gurgaon, India, in early September.
The authority’s decision is expected to be communicated to Mohammed’s family by midday today.
In the lawsuit, Mohammed’s lawyer Gerald Ramdeen claimed that the lengthy period for considering the case was unreasonable considering that the board had determined previous cases within a week.
As the board effectively conceded the case, High Court Judge Devindra Rampersad ordered that it pay the family’s legal costs for threatening the lawsuit.
Mohammed was diagnosed with beta thalassemia, a blood disorder which reduces the production of haemoglobin — the iron-containing protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to cells throughout the body.
However, Hameela’s blood transfusions only began when she was around a year and eight months when her blood count went extremely low. She began taking the blood transfusions every three months, then every two months, every month and now every three weeks.
Doctors have advised the family that the child’s iron level had risen to high levels as a result of frequent blood transfusions and this could lead to organ failure and death. The surgery and associated costs are expected to cost $400,000.
The legal action against the authority comes less than a month after the families of two children suffering from the same genetic disorder were given permission to challenge its refusal to provide funding for their treatment.
In their judicial review case, which is yet to go on trial, four-year-old Shannen Luke and five-year-old Terrance Chandoo’s lawyers are contending that the authority wrongful rejected their applications as it claimed that it does not facilitate reimbursements to families who managed to raise the funds for their operations.