ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion says med­ical staff at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal made every pos­si­ble ef­fort to save the life of a woman and her ba­by who died ear­li­er this month.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion was or­dered by of­fi­cials of the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) fol­low­ing the death of Nadea Shanghie, 27, and her new­born ba­by Zeni­ah. The ba­by died while be­ing de­liv­ered via Cae­sare­an sec­tion on May 15 and the moth­er died on May 16.

Yes­ter­day, a re­lease from the di­vi­sion said the find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that the med­ical staff, in­clud­ing doc­tors, nurs­es, mid­wives, and oth­er per­son­nel in­volved, made every pos­si­ble ef­fort to Shanghie’s life. It said the TRHA team fol­lowed all ap­pro­pri­ate clin­i­cal pro­to­cols in pro­vid­ing emer­gency care dur­ing the crit­i­cal mo­ments.

It said, “In keep­ing with the Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed at TRHA, a meet­ing was held with Shanghie’s fam­i­ly and her pri­vate doc­tor to dis­cuss the ac­tions tak­en by the med­ical team.”

Shanghie was laid to rest last Sat­ur­day.

But the state­ment did lit­tle to al­lay the con­cerns of Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke re­gard­ing the deaths of moth­er and ba­by. He called for the res­ig­na­tion of Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith B.Yis­rael over what he said was the al­leged mis­man­age­ment of the is­land’s health­care sys­tem.

Duke, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, said he was not sat­is­fied with the qual­i­ty of ser­vice at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He al­leged that poor man­age­ment could be linked to the deaths of Shanghie and her ba­by.

Duke said, “We are not sat­is­fied with health and maybe the Chief Sec­re­tary must re­al­ly look at the port­fo­lio of Dr Faith and if she is the best.”

He added, “I have reached the con­clu­sion on Dr Faith that based on an eval­u­a­tion, you should have been re­moved from that di­vi­sion and placed else­where. I’m not will­ing to al­low moth­ers’ and ba­bies’ deaths to pass off like wa­ter on ducks’ backs. What have we learned from all of those deaths… We have had peo­ple go­ing in­to the hos­pi­tal for one sim­ple thing and dy­ing. When will it stop,” he said.

B.Yis­rael failed to re­spond to re­quests for com­ment from the me­dia re­gard­ing Duke’s crit­i­cism. The ques­tions were sent through the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia What­sApp group and an­oth­er mes­sage to her pri­vate chat by Guardian Me­dia.

In­stead, she shared the me­dia re­lease on the out­come of the TRHA’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths of Shanghie and her ba­by.

Mean­while, the TRHA yes­ter­day plead­ed for all preg­nant women to pri­ori­tise and prompt­ly seek an­te­na­tal care.

It urged preg­nant women in To­ba­go to pri­ori­tise their well-be­ing and that of their ba­bies by seek­ing an­te­na­tal care with­out de­lay.

The TRHA lament­ed what it called a con­cern­ing trend of preg­nant women ei­ther de­lay­ing or com­plete­ly ne­glect­ing an­te­na­tal care. It called on preg­nant women to seek reg­u­lar an­te­na­tal vis­its which is es­sen­tial for mon­i­tor­ing the progress of preg­nan­cy and iden­ti­fy­ing any po­ten­tial com­pli­ca­tions ear­ly on.

It warned, “The con­se­quences of in­ad­e­quate an­te­na­tal care can be se­vere and long-last­ing which can lead to in­creased risks of ma­ter­nal and in­fant mor­tal­i­ty, preterm birth, low birth weight, and oth­er ad­verse out­comes.”