AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

An­oth­er call for the Min­is­ter of Health’s res­ig­na­tion—this time in the Up­per House.

It came dur­ing the Ur­gent Ques­tions por­tion of this morn­ing's sit­ting of the Sen­ate.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh when the na­tion could ex­pect his res­ig­na­tion, fol­low­ing the deaths of sev­en ba­bies at the Neo-na­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) of the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The Sen­ate Pres­i­dent did not al­low that ques­tion.

How­ev­er, what was al­lowed was the sub­stan­tive ques­tion which asked whether an in­de­pen­dent body will be in­ves­ti­gat­ing the trag­ic in­ci­dent.

The health min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed that the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) is on the case.

He al­so not­ed that PA­HO still re­quires some in­for­ma­tion be­fore ap­point­ing per­son­nel to probe the mat­ter.

“What PA­HO has re­quest­ed is the in­for­ma­tion that we have, Based on the in­for­ma­tion that we have, then they would de­ter­mine the com­po­si­tion of the team to look in­to the spe­cif­ic ar­eas of con­cern,” the min­is­ter told the Sen­ate.

“So, we don’t have the com­po­si­tion as yet.  It de­pends on the in­for­ma­tion to be sent to the, and then they will de­ter­mine what ar­eas of spe­cial­ty or con­cern, and ap­point the ap­pro­pri­ate per­sons,” he ex­plained.

The health min­is­ter al­so was asked if the par­ents of the sev­en ba­bies have been pro­vid­ed with the med­ical notes and records which they had re­quest­ed from the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that as of Mon­day, the doc­u­ments were not yet re­ceived by their at­tor­ney.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh con­firmed to­day that the doc­u­ments will be sent soon.

“Yes, to Sen­a­tor Lutch­me­di­al and the wider pub­lic—I am ad­vised by the of­fi­cials of the North-West RHA that those files, as we speak, are cur­rent­ly be­ing copied, and hope­ful­ly the par­ents will have their copy by the end of the day, or by to­mor­row for the lat­est,” the min­is­ter as­sured.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al al­so asked if the health min­istry has tak­en any ac­tion to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of the doc­u­ments, but the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent dis­al­lowed that ques­tion. 

The at­tor­neys of the par­ents tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State al­so have re­quest­ed records dat­ing back to Jan­u­ary 2024 in re­la­tions to deaths at the NICU at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The health min­is­ter al­so re­spond­ed to ques­tions on this is­sue.

“What­ev­er in­for­ma­tion needs to be dis­closed on the ad­vice of the at­tor­neys, will be dis­closed,” Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh stat­ed.