Dr Petronella Manning-Alleyne

In the heart of Trinidad and Tobago’s healthcare history lies a quiet revolution led by a woman whose vision, grit, and compassion radically reshaped how the country cares for its most fragile lives.

Dr Petronella Manning-Alleyne, a native of Cocoyea Village in San Fernando, brought modern neonatal/perinatal care to T&T, transforming the existing standard of postnatal care of newborns.

Her 26-year tenure at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital not only saw the establishment of a purpose-built Neonatal Special Care Unit but also a dramatic reduction in neonatal mortality rates.

At the 15th Annual UWI Medical Alumni Association International Conference Gala and Awards Ceremony held on July 27, 2025, Dr Manning-Alleyne received the Professional Excellence Apex Award for her outstanding service and dedicated contribution in the field of neonatology.

This award recognised Dr Manning-Alleyne’s powerful combination of relentless advocacy, medical expertise, and unwavering commitment to equity, empathy, and excellence in newborn care.

Dr Manning-Alleyne’s early life did not lead her down a straight path to becoming a medical professional. She entered primary school at age nine, was placed in Standard Two, and laughingly remembers that she “came second-to-last in test”.

After sitting the Common Entrance Exam, she was unable to secure one of the limited 400 spots available at the time. Undeterred, she sat the exam a second time and was eventually awarded a place in secondary school. Her academic journey took her to Bishop Anstey High School for her A’levels and later to a job in the civil service in Port-of-Spain.

Though expected to become a teacher, as was the norm at the time, she “refused to teach”, and instead spent a year and a half doing church work and visiting the elderly until she got a job at a government office in Port-of-Spain.

Her next course of action was exploring animal husbandry, but after she did an interview for a scholarship, she learnt that there were no scholarship opportunities that year for animal husbandry, and she decided to pursue medicine. Contemplating what directed her to medicine, she says, “I don’t know what the trigger was; I just manoeuvred into medicine and decided to go forward with it.” She entered the University of the West Indies at Mona in 1969 at age 21, with a limited science background.

It was a bold move, and she lacked physics, therefore having to do an M1 year ahead of her medical degree. Persevering through the years of medicine, she had a compatriot in her course, her sister, Dr Pamela Manning, who decided to join her and pursue medicine at the same time.

During 1974-75, in the last year of her degree, she was able to do an elective at various hospitals worldwide and chose to go to the Harlem Hospital Center in NYC, where her husband resided.

This three-month experience at Harlem Hospital Center became a real turning point for Dr Manning-Alleyne. She left to complete her studies in T&T, but on a vacation trip back to NYC to visit her husband, where she went to the hospital, she was encouraged to apply for a job at the Harlem Hospital Center by the chief of staff.

In July 1976, she embarked on a residency and specialised in Paediatrics and Neonatal/Perinatal Medicine. Invited by the Chief of Programmes at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital (a renowned centre for neonatology) to embark on a one-year fellowship, she decided instead to do six months, because she felt that the context of advanced technology and processes at the hospital was very far removed from Trinidad, where she planned to return.

Following her fellowship, Manning-Alleyne was appointed co-director of the Division of Neonatology at Harlem Hospital Centre in New York, where she gained unmatched expertise in managing critically ill newborns.

During her time in NYC, Dr Manning-Alleyne’s passion for caring for newborns was even more strongly fuelled by her personal experience, as her first of four children was a girl, born preterm at 27 weeks, weighing one pound, 13 ounces.

She remembers her daughter being in the hospital for 90 days, and when they wanted to keep her longer, “I said, look, it’s time for her to go home,” she recounts–deciding to take on her care herself. With her family growing and drawn by a strong pull to put her skills to use in T&T, she returned home in 1982.

Upon returning to Trinidad, she was offered a position as registrar at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, and the conditions she met were severely substandard, lacking basic equipment and structure. “It was a diaper and shine unit,” she said, “with nobody who had neonatal qualifications or expertise, where babies were sometimes placed two to an incubator.”

Faced not only with these substandard conditions, she also had to contend with opposition from nurses in the unit, “who drilled me to see if I was suitable as a newcomer to work on their ward”.

Not deterred by these circumstances, Dr Manning-Alleyne introduced protocols, trained staff, ordered proper equipment, and most critically, changed the culture of care. Describing herself as “good with my hands”, she even used various resourceful methods to build and put together equipment that she fashioned after the equipment babies needed but didn’t have.

Despite resistance, she forged ahead, and within three months, her introduction of an antibiotic policy alone saw neonatal mortality drop significantly, from 29.9 per 1,000 live births to 19.9 per 1,000 live births.

She created training programmes, hand-built early versions of life-saving tools, and personally trained every intern, doctor and nurse who came through the unit.

Her commitment was total. “I was on call every minute, of every hour, of every day,” she says, often leaving events, family road trips, and her sons Scouts concerts when the hospital needed her.

Remembering the one day she actually took off her phone at a concert in Queen’s Hall put on by a benefactor, “an usher crept up, patted me on my shoulder, and said I was needed at the hospital”. She spent ten dedicated years without a vacation and remembers “hearing the machines beeping in my ears in my sleep”.

Subsequent to her upgrade of the policies, care practices and human resources in the unit, it was clear that the unit needed a physical upgrade. Dr Manning-Alleyne conceptualised and led the construction of the new Neonatal Special Care Unit at POSGH “as the chief cook and bottle washer”.

From the layout to the furnishings, she insisted on excellence, flying self-funded to Columbia Presbyterian to study the layout and new setups there, and even shutting down construction four times to maintain standards.

Though she retired before it was completed in 2008, “it was my blood, sweat and tears that started a new era and brought the unit together”. When she did a post-completion walk-through, she came armed with a notebook to write a list of things that had to be changed and was brought back on to finish what would become the centre for gold-standard neonatal care in the country. Her leadership, attention to detail, and relentless pursuit of excellence ensured the facility would serve generations to come.

Dr Manning-Alleyne’s impact, however, extended beyond bricks and mortar. She established several new policies—including sibling visits, parent education, breastfeeding rooms, and nurse training systems—that outlasted her tenure. She also worked closely with obstetricians to ensure better outcomes even before birth.

Ever practical, she tackled hospital overcrowding by bringing together senior leaders to brainstorm solutions that would resolve the issue of having two mothers in one bed. She built not just a unit but a model, one that prioritised dignity, safety, and respect for newborns and their families.

Now retired, Dr Manning-Alleyne tends lovingly to her garden and offers free monthly online teaching via Facebook to new parents, offering guidance that bridges science and common sense. She is also in the process of writing a book about newborn development and care, aiming to demystify the neonatal period and empower parents with knowledge of what is normal versus abnormal in newborns.

Despite a career spent in high-stakes, high-stress hospital work, she remains accessible, generous with her wisdom, and dedicated to her original mission: giving every baby—no matter how small, how “preemie”, or how sick—a fighting chance at life.

Dr Petronella Manning-Alleyne is not just a doctor; she is a pioneer, a builder, a teacher, and a visionary. Her legacy lives in the thousands of babies who have now grown up and those who survived because she refused to accept mediocrity and poured all of herself into advancing the care of newborns.

Neonatal care in T&T has a foundation because she laid it with her own hands, her brilliant mind, her passion, and her heart.