On March 4, T&T cel­e­brat­ed when more than three dozen health­care pro­fes­sion­als at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the pre­ma­ture de­liv­ery of sex­tu­plets to Kieron Cum­mings and Pe­tra Lee Foon. But since March 4, two of the six ba­bies have died and one is still ward­ed at the NICU.

This has led mem­bers of the be­reaved fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing the fa­ther, to com­plain about the qual­i­ty of post-na­tal care pro­vid­ed to the ba­bies and that the neo-na­tal unit was "short of equip­ment."The Min­istry of Health re­spond­ed by is­su­ing a long list of equip­ment that was pur­chased es­pe­cial­ly for the care of the sex­tu­plets, but which will be avail­able in fu­ture for oth­er high-risk births.

The min­istry al­so main­tains that most of the con­cerns iden­ti­fied by the con­sul­tant/head of the NICU, Ca­ma­nee Lutch­man–who in Jan­u­ary drew at­ten­tion to the lack of equip­ment, space, trained nurs­es and se­nior med­ical staff–were ad­dressed in time for the de­liv­ery.While it is im­pos­si­ble to de­ter­mine where the blame lies for the deaths of the two ba­bies, the de­liv­ery of six ex­treme­ly low-birth-weight, pre­ma­ture in­fants in a short space of time is very risky wher­ev­er in the world the op­er­a­tion takes place.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, how­ev­er, is cer­tain­ly mis­tak­en on a num­ber of counts in his re­port­ed re­sponse to Mr Cum­mings' com­ments.Dr Khan said the ba­bies' par­ents should be grate­ful for the care they re­ceived. But Mr Cum­mings and Ms Lee Foon are tax­pay­ers, and their ba­bies are cit­i­zens of this coun­try who are en­ti­tled to re­ceive the ser­vices they re­quire. It is the job of Dr Khan and the staff of the pub­lic health sys­tem to en­sure that their health­care needs are met–not a spe­cial favour.

The min­is­ter ought to have been more tact­ful in re­fer­ring to the lack of grat­i­tude and de­pen­den­cy of the fa­ther of the sex­tu­plets, who com­plained about the qual­i­ty of post-na­tal care that his chil­dren re­ceived.As a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, his role is to put poli­cies in place for the ef­fi­cient run­ning of the coun­try's health sys­tem. It is out of place and un­be­com­ing for him to launch per­son­al at­tacks on a mem­ber of the pub­lic who crit­i­cis­es the health sys­tem–as the pub­lic is en­ti­tled to do, right­ly or wrong­ly.

Dr Khan crossed an­oth­er line with his snide re­marks about the fam­i­ly's new HDC house–which they had ap­plied for and are pay­ing for. Again, they are en­ti­tled to re­ceive the goods and ser­vices they have paid for and which they need. Nor does HDC hous­ing fall in­to the Health Min­is­ter's port­fo­lio.

Dr Khan, who is him­self a con­sul­tant physi­cian of many years' stand­ing, should have had some mod­icum of em­pa­thy for the fam­i­ly, who are go­ing through a lev­el of stress that no one else in this coun­try has ever ex­pe­ri­enced.Mr Cum­mings is not a po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent but a griev­ing fa­ther who has just lost two tiny ba­bies who he be­lieves might have sur­vived and who is no doubt still anx­ious about his oth­er chil­dren.As a physi­cian, a min­is­ter and a fa­ther, Dr Khan should have stuck to the facts and oth­er­wise held his tongue.