When­ev­er we get some good news for the coun­try, eg, the pas­sage of the Bail and Poly­graphs Act, both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion “ex­er­cis­ing ma­tu­ri­ty,” as the Guardian Ed­i­to­r­i­al put it on Sun­day, you im­me­di­ate­ly get cuff in your face and it’s back to shak­ing your head and cussing.

This is a coun­try where at times, it looks like all peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in pho­tos of four-year-old “grad­u­ates” in gowns and mor­tar­boards, or who is who in which beau­ty pageant, Ms Mag­nif­i­cent Mom or Miss In­dia World­wide, and if the nurse from Princes Town, who was in­volved in the Miss In­dia World­wide con­test and got as­sas­si­nat­ed out­side the health cen­tre, is the one in the sex video.

What a commess coun­try! I pub­lished an ar­ti­cle last week about a ma­jor prob­lem chil­dren face to­day, smart­phone syn­drome. I am ashamed to tell you how many peo­ple ac­cessed it on my Face­book Page.

The week be­fore, I post­ed an old British pub­li­ca­tion, noth­ing to do with T&T, about a stat sug­gest­ing that one in 25 fa­thers was not the bi­o­log­i­cal par­ent, and three times the num­ber of read­ers ac­cessed that one.

So it’s not un­sur­pris­ing that the ea­ger­ly await­ed PA­HO re­port on the deaths in the POS­GH NICU has come and gone with­out much com­men­tary in pub­lic. Any­way, here’s my sum­ma­ry of the PA­HO re­port, which was a very sim­ple doc­u­ment. It should be used as the ba­sis for a fuller re­port by the Min­istry of Health, which will nev­er be done be­cause it would re­quire a lot of hard work. It’s eas­i­er to lay the for­eign-made one in Par­lia­ment and, ex­cept for the lawyers and par­ents in­volved, buss it.

To briefly sum­marise, the re­port found that sev­en of the eight pre­emies died of in­fec­tion and that in­fec­tion con­trol in the hos­pi­tal was poor. Here are the ma­jor find­ings:

The NICU was un­der­staffed and over­crowd­ed. Too many pa­tients, too many beds, and not enough nurs­es. Hence, in­fec­tion con­trol among pa­tients was dif­fi­cult. Alarm­ing­ly, there weren’t even enough al­co­hol dis­pensers in the NICU for nurs­es to dis­in­fect their hands ad­e­quate­ly while tak­ing care of two or three ba­bies. At the hos­pi­tal lev­el, in­fec­tion con­trol was al­so poor. It turns out there is no one re­spon­si­ble for in­fec­tion con­trol in the hos­pi­tal. That’s quite a re­mark­able lapse.

Sur­veil­lance for month­ly blood in­fec­tions is not done. NICU med­ica­tions were not be­ing pre­pared in ster­ile con­di­tions in the phar­ma­cy. Apart from the prob­lems with in­fec­tion con­trol, there was some crit­i­cism of the be­hav­iour of the staff them­selves. For ex­am­ple, ear­ly breast­milk feed­ing was not be­ing ad­vised, and there were breach­es in the use of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment. Both could be re­lat­ed to un­der­staffing and over­work­ing. The min­istry has pro­nounced that “many of the rec­om­men­da­tions con­tained with­in the re­port were al­ready in­te­gral parts of the na­tion­al and re­gion­al stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures,” what­ev­er that means. They cer­tain­ly were not fol­low­ing those prin­ci­ples.

The over­all im­pres­sion is that the prob­lem with the NICU is the hos­pi­tal ad­min­is­tra­tion. It’s of nurs­es work­ing un­der po­ten­tial­ly sep­tic con­di­tions (un­der­staffing, over­crowd­ing, lim­it­ed sep­sis con­trol) with­out sup­port from the hos­pi­tal in­fec­tion pre­ven­tion and con­trol sys­tem, which it­self is not work­ing prop­er­ly. Those are ad­min­is­tra­tive prob­lems. Ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so seems to be the prob­lem with the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.

The PM made a state­ment last week that is the most fright­en­ing I have heard since the 1991 coup, and again, it’s ap­par­ent­ly about a coup plot. De­tails are sketchy, and as again, the Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al says it “raised more ques­tions than an­swers.” Pre­sum­ably, there was a plan for cer­tain para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel “to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship!” Ap­par­ent­ly, a group with­in our lo­cal Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices—some­thing that sounds like it’s an im­i­ta­tion of the US CIA, the SSA—was ac­cused by the PM of plot­ting to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment. What! Just so? Twen­ty-eight peo­ple from the agency have been fired, some of them be­long­ing to a re­li­gious “cult” in the East. What is it with re­li­gious cults in the East? This is ab­solute­ly as­tound­ing. Again, the re­ac­tion from the pub­lic and press is al­so as­tound­ing. Ex­cept for the Op­po­si­tion and the oc­ca­sion­al ed­i­to­r­i­al, no one seems to care. No one is tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. No one has been ar­rest­ed. Thou­sands of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion are miss­ing. There’s no talk of a state of emer­gency.

Now one is hear­ing that it is all a lie, and there are de­nials all around, from the for­mer di­rec­tor of the SSA to a for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty say­ing he is not to blame for the fi­as­co. Is this an at­tempt­ed po­lit­i­cal coup sim­i­lar to the one that has just oc­curred in the USA or an­oth­er sort of “email­gate”? What a mau­vais langue na­tion we are.