Could any­one tell me why our Min­is­ter of Health found it nec­es­sary to pub­licly be­rate the par­ents of the sex­tu­plets via one of our na­tion­al news­pa­pers, la­belling them in­grates and boast­ing of the large ex­pen­di­ture from the pub­lic purse on equip­ment pur­chased in or­der for T&T to have the "ho­n­our" of de­liv­er­ing said sex­tu­plets–as if the equip­ment would not be used for any­one else? Would that he had been able to boast that they had tak­en home six ba­bies!

I am cast­ing no as­per­sion on the lev­el of care giv­en these in­fants and no doubt all con­cerned gave of their all. How­ev­er, as Dr Khan must be aware, those in­fants would have re­quired high­ly spe­cialised nurs­ing and med­ical care even in a first world hos­pi­tal. Along with the spe­cial equip­ment pur­chased for the oc­ca­sion, did we pos­sess suf­fi­cient­ly ex­pe­ri­enced med­ical and nurs­ing staff who would be up to such a dif­fi­cult task?

Fur­ther, has any­one stopped to con­sid­er that per­haps the fa­ther was not con­demn­ing any­one, mere­ly wish­ing (in hind­sight) that he had fol­lowed the ini­tial ad­vice to go over­seas for the de­liv­ery as per­haps to­day they would have had all six chil­dren? That "maybe" will be with them for the rest of their lives. None of us has had to bear their pain and none of us has to live with that "what if."

Come on, Dr Khan–and every­one else cast­ing stones at them–where is your hu­man char­i­ty? I lost my first child, pre­ma­ture too, but cer­tain­ly big and healthy at birth, where there was a ques­tion as to the neona­tal med­ical at­ten­tion giv­en af­ter birth–the pae­di­ati­cian did not turn up for well over 12 hours af­ter birth–and that "if" is still with me to­day, al­most 40 years lat­er.So I can sym­pa­thise with them. I just pray that they will get to take home their lit­tle daugh­ter who is still hos­pi­talised.

Vir­ginia Ver­i­ty

via e-mail