The Health Min­is­ter says he, too, is keen to get an­swers from PA­HO re­gard­ing its probe in­to the deaths of sev­en ba­bies at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH).

Speak­ing at a blood dri­ve to com­mem­o­rate World Blood Donor Day on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said he was still wait­ing on a date from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) on when he will get the re­port.

“They haven’t giv­en me a firm date as yet,” he said.

Be­tween April 4 to 9, sev­en ba­bies died while at the PoS­GH’s Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU).

Two weeks af­ter the deaths, a three-mem­ber team from PA­HO be­gan an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The mem­bers in­clud­ed Prof Nali­ni Singh, a pae­di­a­tri­cian from the Glob­al Health and Epi­demi­ol­o­gy de­part­ment at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty; Dr Grisel Ro­driguez, a clin­i­cal mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist, Head of Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy, Cen­tro de Asis­ten­cia Med­ica So­ri­ano and Dr Gillian Birch­wood, a new­born in­ten­sive care spe­cial­ist and head of the Neona­tal Care In­ten­sive Unit at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal, Bar­ba­dos.

Days lat­er, the team com­plet­ed its in­ves­ti­ga­tion at the NICU and met with min­istry of­fi­cials. The team al­so met with of­fi­cials at the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) for a de­brief­ing fol­low­ing the five-day in­ves­tiga­tive pe­ri­od. 

Yes­ter­day, the min­is­ter said as soon as he gets a date, the re­port will be made pub­lic.

“I want an­swers too,” he ex­claimed.

The vic­tims in­clude Shaniya Ray­mond-Adams and Ker­ron Charles, who lost their ba­by Kae’ Jhene Ker­ni­ah Charles; Chirese Moore-Beck­les and Ron­dell Beck­les whose ba­by was named Crys­tell Pre­cious Mir­a­cle; Danyelle Sama­roo and Avinash Chater­goon who lost Aarya Raya Chater­goon; Jodie Moli­no and Travis Moli­no who named their ba­by Esme Moli­no; Shaquille Har­ry and Kadeem Williams whose ba­by was Ro­mani Williams and Natasha Samuel and Brent Wil­son whose new­born was named Skiye Samuel.

Since the is­sue was raised, oth­er par­ents out­side of the clus­ter have stepped for­ward claim­ing that their in­fants al­so died be­cause of neg­li­gence by staff at PoS­GH NICU and at two oth­er re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties. 

The NWRHA has ad­vised that the oth­er re­ports, while trag­ic, should be ad­dressed in­de­pen­dent­ly from the clus­ter. —Carisa Lee