Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The Health Min­istry is re­view­ing the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s re­port in­to the April deaths of sev­en neonates at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit and will soon hand it over to the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day.

“It’s a very heavy doc­u­ment. We are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing it, then the CMO will send it to PA­HO for their at­ten­tion,” he told re­porters at the NWRHA’s Health Ini­tia­tive For Men at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of NWRHA’s re­port, Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, who is rep­re­sent­ing the par­ents of the sev­en de­ceased neonates, called for the re­port to be made pub­lic. Ram­lo­gan said his firm in­tends to write the au­thor­i­ty and is seek­ing a copy.

Deyals­ingh al­so ad­dressed re­newed con­cerns by some about Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s NICU af­ter a pre­ma­ture ba­by died on Ju­ly 6. An au­top­sy on the ba­by was ex­pect­ed to be per­formed this past week.

Deyals­ingh said no coun­try has a ze­ro neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate.

“It doesn’t mean, as is played out in the pub­lic do­main, that every un­for­tu­nate neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty is the fault of health care work­ers, is the fault of the sys­tem. The NICU in Port-of-Spain is the on­ly lev­el four NICU, which takes in the sick­est, most pre­ma­ture ba­bies from across the coun­try, in­clud­ing the pri­vate sec­tor, and we must cel­e­brate their suc­cess­es.

“When I came in­to of­fice, our neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate was 12 ba­bies dy­ing per 1,000 live births. We have brought that down to less than sev­en. We have sur­passed our Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal for 2030. We reached that mile­stone in 2018. What hap­pened in POS, as I keep say­ing, is an iso­lat­ed, trag­ic, un­for­tu­nate event where six or sev­en ex­treme­ly pre­ma­ture, un­der­weight ba­bies suc­cumbed and that is be­ing lost in the con­ver­sa­tion,” Deyals­ingh said.

PA­HO’s re­port in­to the sev­en deaths, which oc­curred be­tween April 2 and 9, was de­liv­ered to Deyals­ingh on June 21 and was laid in Par­lia­ment on June 28.

The re­port flagged sev­er­al con­cerns, in­clud­ing an in­ad­e­quate ra­tio of nurs­ing pro­fes­sion­als to pa­tients; a lim­it­ed pres­ence of hands-free al­co­hol-based dis­pensers; a lack of poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for the use of mul­ti­dose med­ica­tions; and breach­es of in-per­son pro­tec­tive equip­ment pro­to­cols.

The re­port rat­ed mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy com­pli­ance at 40 per cent and epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance of in­fec­tion com­pli­ance at 80 per cent.

Be­tween April 4 and 9, the NWRHA re­port­ed sev­en in­fant deaths at its NICU due to a bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion. Sev­er­al oth­er par­ents stepped for­ward claim­ing neg­li­gence in the deaths of their neonates due to al­leged in­fec­tions or im­prop­er care.