Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, the shad­ow Health Min­is­ter, yes­ter­day called for the res­ig­na­tion of Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh fol­low­ing the deaths of sev­en ba­bies at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

At the UNC’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Bo­doe, an ob­ste­tri­cian said since Deyals­ingh takes cred­it for the good work at the neona­tal clin­ics, he should al­so shoul­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty now that some­thing has gone wrong.

“If the min­is­ter tru­ly be­lieves the words he ut­tered in Par­lia­ment that he was per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for the in­fant mor­tal­i­ty rates drop­ping in 2016, then equal­ly he has to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this tragedy at the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty. I think it is on­ly fair, so in the cir­cum­stances, he should do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign,” he said.

Bo­doe’s call for Deyals­ingh to re­sign comes a day af­ter pres­i­dent of the T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion Idi Stu­art said heads must roll for the in­fant deaths.

In Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Deyals­ingh apol­o­gised to the par­ents of the sev­en ba­bies who died of neona­tal sep­sis at the NICU be­tween April 4 and 7.

He said the NWRHA has al­ways im­ple­ment­ed strin­gent in­fec­tion pre­ven­tion and con­trol prac­tices, which are stan­dard in the NICU.

On Sat­ur­day, at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan SC is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col class ac­tion let­ter to the NWRHA on be­half of the par­ents of the sev­en ba­bies. Yes­ter­day he is­sued an­oth­er let­ter on be­half of a To­bag­on­ian moth­er whose ba­by died on April 6, four days af­ter she was born.

Bo­doe said he wants Deyals­ingh to come clean and dis­close when ex­act­ly he learnt about the deaths. The Op­po­si­tion MP said he had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that bac­te­ria that caused the neona­tal sep­sis was found un­der sinks.

He said the in­ci­dent un­der­mined the pub­lic’s trust and con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s health­care sys­tem and asked whether the deaths were due to a short­age of equip­ment.

Bo­doe re­ferred to said a 2013 re­port by the Ma­ter­ni­ty Ser­vices Com­mit­tee which con­tained sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions to ad­dress in­fant mor­tal­i­ty, in­clud­ing a nurse-to-pa­tient ra­tio of one to one for ven­ti­lat­ed ba­bies, one nurse to two in­fants at the high de­pen­den­cy unit and one nurse to four neonates in spe­cial care.

Stu­art and Bo­doe have ex­pressed con­cerns about the pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the NICU by im­prop­er pro­ce­dures. On Sat­ur­day Stu­art said the in­ci­dent raised con­cerns about oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at health in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing med­ical staff (not nurs­es) en­ter­ing ster­ilised ar­eas with un­ster­ilised cloth­ing.

“We would al­so want to call on some of our med­ical col­leagues, nurs­ing per­son­nel, for in­stance, who do not and are not al­lowed to walk the hall­ways of the hos­pi­tal with their in­ten­sive care out­fits on.

“You re­main with­in your de­part­ment, and if you’re leav­ing your de­part­ment, you take off your cov­er­all. We have wit­nessed… and we would def­i­nite­ly call up­on oth­er cat­e­gories of per­sons to dis­con­tin­ue walk­ing in and out of these de­part­ments, which are sup­posed to be very ster­ilised,” Stu­art said.

Bo­doe, who has more than 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence as an ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist and spent 15 months at the NICU said more could have and should have been done.

He said as a for­mer head of the South-West­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, the deaths pained him.

“As an ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist for 35-plus years, I care for women and de­liv­er their ba­bies. I un­der­stand their hopes and as­pi­ra­tions. I can cer­tain­ly un­der­stand the an­guish, de­spair and dis­ap­point­ment that the moth­ers of those sev­en dead ba­bies are feel­ing.”