News of the deaths of eleven ba­bies in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal over the last month – in­clud­ing sev­en over a four-day pe­ri­od from April 4-7, two in Feb­ru­ary and two in March - has been met with pub­lic out­rage and con­ster­na­tion, along with strong ex­pres­sions of re­gret from our lo­cal health and gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the new San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he was “par­tic­u­lar­ly sad” about the sit­u­a­tion, which has left 11 fam­i­lies reel­ing with in­ex­plic­a­ble grief and has un­doubt­ed­ly rat­tled any re­main­ing con­fi­dence the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion had in the pub­lic health­care de­liv­ery sys­tem.

Be­fore him, an un­der-pres­sure Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh al­so sought to shrug off calls for his res­ig­na­tion over the is­sue, while em­pathis­ing with the griev­ing par­ents to the point of sug­gest­ing that if he were in their shoes, he too would be look­ing to sue the State in a quest for jus­tice.

At the end of the day though, noth­ing can be done to bring back these in­no­cent vic­tims or to com­pen­sate loved ones for their hor­rif­ic loss.

More iron­i­cal­ly, the av­er­age Trinida­di­an fam­i­ly has no al­ter­na­tive to pub­lic health­care. So even with the NICU cur­rent­ly un­der se­vere pub­lic scruti­ny and as fears abound amid its con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion, there is re­al­ly no oth­er place to go for scores of preg­nant women who do not have mon­ey to pay for a pri­vate de­liv­ery.

Based on our checks with lo­cal doc­tors, for those who can af­ford to go pri­vate, a nor­mal de­liv­ery can range be­tween $25,000 to $35,000, while for those ex­pec­tant moth­ers who are faced with more dif­fi­cult births, the cost is be­tween $40-60,000 for a C-Sec­tion, de­pend­ing on the in­sti­tu­tion and the lev­el of med­ical in­sur­ance they per­son­al­ly en­joy.

In short, good health care in Trinidad and To­ba­go does not come cheap, and for those who can­not af­ford to pay, grief comes not on­ly in the form of death some­times, but al­so in long waits, lack of ac­cess to prop­er nu­tri­tion and guid­ance, in ad­di­tion to prob­lems with their med­ical care providers, lack of equip­ment and im­prop­er­ly func­tion­ing equip­ment at pub­lic hos­pi­tals, not to men­tion chal­lenges to do with the phys­i­cal plants.

This is why sor­ry is sim­ply not enough as we await the out­come of the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­duct­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Health (PA­HO) in­to the lat­est deaths.

There is ur­gent need for us to raise the over­all stan­dard of pub­lic health­care de­liv­ery in this coun­try by en­sur­ing that not on­ly the mon­ey re­sources are al­lo­cat­ed, but al­so that our pub­lic hos­pi­tals are up to mark in terms of prop­er staffing with qual­i­fied and well-trained med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, who not on­ly fol­low but have a healthy re­gard for best prac­tices and stan­dards.

Of course, death is a re­al­i­ty we must all face up to, but at the very least those in­ter­fac­ing in our pub­lic hos­pi­tals should be guar­an­teed a safe, well-sani­tised and bac­te­ria-free en­vi­ron­ment.

Any­thing less than that is symp­to­matic of a pub­lic health­care de­liv­ery sys­tem that is bro­ken and in ur­gent need of cure.