The fa­ther of a ba­by girl who died one week af­ter de­liv­ery at Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, says the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to leg­is­late a Med­ical Mal­prac­tice Court and a No-Fault Com­pen­sa­tion Fund is a step in the right di­rec­tion — but it must be peo­ple-cen­tred.

Jo­hann Leza­ma and his wife are pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion fol­low­ing the death of their daugh­ter, Seren­i­ty, in March this year. While the ini­tial au­top­sy cit­ed com­pli­ca­tions of pre­ma­tu­ri­ty as the cause of death, a pri­vate sec­ond au­top­sy re­vealed Seren­i­ty died due to com­pli­ca­tions from a trau­mat­ic breech de­liv­ery.

“Fam­i­lies like mine de­serve an­swers, not just what they call pay­outs. A spe­cial court might help bring fo­cus on these mat­ters, but on­ly if it tru­ly em­pow­ers fam­i­lies and holds neg­li­gent in­sti­tu­tions like Mount Hope ac­count­able,” Leza­ma said dur­ing a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.