‘They treated him like an experiment,’ says father after 4-year-old dies at Mt Hope Hospital

Trinidad and Tobago: A grieving father is calling for justice following the death of his son Ayden Ishwar Clement at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mount Hope. The father Ishwar Carlton Clement is alleging that his son died at the age of four in the MRI room of the hospital on April 17, 2025, because of severe negligence by hospital staff.

The father alleged that his son was treated merely as an ‘experiment’ rather than a patient who was in urgent need of care. Ishwar and Abena Clement said medical staff never told them their son’s condition was critical. Ayden had been taken to the Mt Hope hospital with a swollen knee and a limp.

According to his father, doctors recommended that the child be admitted but he was taken home initially because staff failed to clearly explain what was wrong. “They didn’t say he had an infection or that anything serious was found,” Ishwar said.

An autopsy later revealed Ayden died from heart and respiratory failure, multiple organ failure, a blood infection and a suspected bone infection.

In a statement which is now circulating across social media, the father is rejecting claims by the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) that his son received appropriate care and insisted that he has documented everything that happened inside the hospital, saying that the hospital ward tells a very different story.

While sharing a video of his son Ayden Ishwar Clement lying in hospital bed with visible distress and continuous pulsing in his neck, the father asked, “Does this look like someone stable?” He claimed that despite multiple alerts to nurses and staff on duty no one took him seriously and no urgent medical intervention was carried out.

The father continued to say that the hospital staff assured him that the visible symptoms were completely normal and did not take any action. He further accused the medical staff of failing to properly monitor his son overnight and also questioned whether hospital records would show if any meaningful checks were made on his son.

He also criticised the conduct of his son’s doctors and claimed that they rushed to view his dead body at the morgue but avoided meaningful engagement with the family afterward. “They literally made a U-turn when they saw us in the waiting area,” he said. “Why so?”

Since the incident, the father is calling on the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) to launch a full criminal investigation into his son’s death and is urging authorities to consider offering immunity to hospital staff willing to testify against colleagues.