As someone who has always noticed when an established norm fails the basic common sense test, I’m used to finding myself standing alone, out on a limb, pointing out that there’s a better way. Whether it’s suggesting procedures to help an organisation reach its stated goals or informing a school that it is not, in fact, reasonable to expect a child to quietly accept physical abuse because “fighting is wrong,” I’m all too familiar with the experience of being the only person flagging an issue that affects everyone while everyone else looks on in silence. Well, everyone except the special souls who can’t help chiming in to point out that “that’s the way it is.”

Every time I find myself in such a situation, I fight the urge to turn to all the silent ones—the ones who always lack the will to speak up but never lack the energy to complain incessantly—and shake them. “Don’t you know,” I want to ask, “how easy it would be to fix this if you got up off your ass and said something, too?” But I don’t. I’ve had enough conversations with people who lack the courage of their complaints to know what they’re most likely to say: “What difference would it make? It’s always been this way.” Or, if they’re a bit more self-aware, “I’d like to, but I need this job/I’m afraid they’ll treat my child badly/I doh want to get in dat, nah.” So, I don’t bother. Instead, I pick my battles with the knowledge that when I choose to fight, I will most likely be fighting alone. At least, that is, until more people remember how much easier it is to address the problems that plague us when we do it together.

As I’ve watched the story of the Port of Spain General Hospital (POSGH) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit’s (NICU) bacterial outbreak unfold over the last few days, I’ve begun to wonder if we might be on the verge of recalling what we’ve forgotten.

If you haven’t been following along, it looks like 11 (and counting) premature babies died in the NICU between February 22nd and April 9th (the first seven of which died in the space of a week) after being exposed to three types of deadly bacteria. The parents have since joined forces to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA).

The story has only gained traction since the news first broke, as more parents step forward to reveal that they may have also lost their precious newborns to a bacterial infection at the same facility. It kicked off on April 11th, with an NWRHA press release that—while claiming the matter had been addressed—failed to mention exactly how many infants had died, whether the authority was planning to look into how the bacteria found its way into the NICU in the first place, or how they planned to prevent the situation from happening again. It wasn’t until the following day that we learned the parents had gone to the media before the press release was published with claims that the NWRHA had never bothered to share their children’s cause of death with them. Then, it was only after the pre-action protocol letters were sent that we got the heads up that the NWRHA asked the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) to assist with investigating the deaths.

In the meantime, it’s been a steady trickle of stories. Every day, we get new details from the grieving parents about how the tragedies unfolded. In the last three days alone, the alleged death toll has climbed from seven to eight to eleven. We’ve heard galling (and familiar) allegations about the way the parents were treated as their newborns succumbed to bacterial infections. From the parents who say they were told to run out and buy an $800 filter for a blood transfusion because the hospital didn’t have any (they were reimbursed after their daughter died), to the mother who reports that a nurse replied to her queries about her son’s swollen body with “Girl relax yuhself nah!!! Ent we telling yuh dem ting always happening with dem premature babies? We tell yuh already he just is not feeling well today. Gosh Man!!!”, it’s clear that—on top of the serious concerns about potential protocol violations—the NWRHA has serious questions to answer about the way its staff tends to handle patients and their families when they’re at their most vulnerable.

Contrary to the Prime Minister’s claim about our eagerness to “put the healthcare system down,” the fact is that poor treatment is a staple of the “free” healthcare experience in Trinidad and Tobago. I’m not talking about the skill and dedication of the medical personnel working in our public healthcare system. The fact that they’re able to save lives on a daily basis in an environment where they would be in a position to ask patients’ families to purchase necessary medical supplies is in and of itself miraculous and a testament to their commitment to the field. (It also raises questions about Dr. Rowley’s claim that “Health has always been a priority for this government,” but that’s a matter for a different kind of post; this one is long enough as it is.) I am also, obviously, not saying that every single person in the public healthcare sector is guilty of treating patients and their loved ones poorly on a daily basis. What I’m saying is that it’s happening often enough to be a well-known problem.

No one who has had a reason to head to a health centre or public hospital is surprised by the treatment the grieving parents claim to have received. Whenever our leaders refer to healthcare in T&T, they glide right over the endless complaints of poor treatment (to say nothing of the lack of critical resources), but there’s a reason that those who can afford to do so spend thousands of dollars a year on private health insurance when our public healthcare system supposedly provides everything we need, free of charge. Those who can’t (and those who learn the hard way that the expensive private healthcare system isn’t actually a 1:1 replacement for the public one) know to brace themselves and adopt a posture of careful deference in the hopes of avoiding (at best) a hard boof from those caring for you.

Our leaders ignore it because they believe they can. They know they will never personally experience it, and neither will those they actually care about, because they will either avoid the public system altogether or they’ll enter it wrapped in the privilege that comes with authority and wealth, shielded from the kind of treatment reserved for those less privileged. They assume they can continue to ignore it because it’s worked for them so far. That much is clear from the fact that the NWRHA didn’t even bother to announce an investigation in their initial press release.

We might complain, but we do it individually, and then we drop it because we’ve accepted that “it’s just the way things are.” We haven’t yet grasped that the way things are is not the way they have to be. But, as we sit here watching an increasing number of families stand up and demand accountability (and, hopefully, compensation) for the way they and their babies were treated, I genuinely hope that we’re beginning to figure it out. I hope we begin to realise that the reason those in positions of power react the way they do to any form of dissent is because they know what too many of us don’t: that power is ours. We give it to them, which means we can snatch it back if necessary.

Had the first three families simply sat quietly with their grief (as they are fully entitled to do), we may never have known that anything unusual had happened in the POSGH NICU. Instead, they chose to bear their pain for the nation to see, which allowed other families to realise that they had also fallen victim to the same situation. It’s too early to tell what will come out of their courage (T&T is not a land of willing accountability), but there’s no doubt that something will.

Here’s hoping that, in addition to clarity and accountability, the results will include a newly reawakened awareness of the power of solidarity and the importance of standing together to force the changes we want to see in our country. How else will they happen?