Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is em­pathis­ing with the par­ents of the sev­en ba­bies who died of neona­tal sep­sis in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH) ear­li­er this month.

Fol­low­ing the news that the be­reaved par­ents of the ba­bies have de­cid­ed to sue the state, Deyals­ingh said he would have done the same.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said the par­ents de­serve their day in court, but re­vealed that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour is al­so prepar­ing a team to deal with the mat­ters.

“It is their ab­solute right be­cause if I was one of those par­ents, I would en­gage le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion... If I were a par­ent, I would seek re­dress be­fore the courts. I have no prob­lems with that but rep­re­sent­ing the state, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will be seek­ing the in­ter­est of the state by putting to­geth­er his lawyers,” Deyals­ingh said.

“But hav­ing en­gaged le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, I can tell you that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is putting to­geth­er a team of lawyers to man­age the sit­u­a­tion and be­cause the mat­ter is now head­ing for the courts, as it should, I am now con­strained as to what I can say in the pub­lic do­main, so I won’t be shar­ing any new in­for­ma­tion. All that will come out in the courts,” he added.

Deyals­ingh has al­so re­ceived some back­lash from the Op­po­si­tion, who has called for his res­ig­na­tion over the tragedy.

Asked about this, Deyals­ingh said while such calls are ex­pect­ed from the Op­po­si­tion, he does not in­tend to politi­cise the is­sue.

Deyals­ingh said, “When Chrys­tal Ram­soomair died in San Fer­nan­do, did we call for the res­ig­na­tion of Fuad Khan (for­mer health min­is­ter un­der Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship)? When ba­by Cot­tle, whose skull was sliced open by a doc­tor and died, did we call for the res­ig­na­tion of Fuad Khan? We didn’t. On our side, we don’t play these types of po­lit­i­cal games, but we un­der­stand where it’s com­ing from...I ex­pect noth­ing bet­ter from the UNC.

“I do not in­tend to make a po­lit­i­cal is­sue out of this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent. That is not the way that we do things. We will ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. It’s high­ly re­gret­table.”

Asked if there were any more ba­bies cur­rent­ly in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, Deyals­ingh said there are al­ways ba­bies in crit­i­cal con­di­tion across the NICU, es­pe­cial­ly pre­ma­ture ba­bies and ba­bies born with de­fects. How­ev­er, he as­sured the pub­lic that the NICU was now safe for ba­bies.

“They start­ed read­mis­sions and the on­ly way you can start read­mis­sions to that part of the NICU is if it is fit for pur­pose, so the an­swer is yes,” Deyals­ingh said.

Ef­forts to con­tact NWRHA boss Blake were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia al­so vis­it­ed the PoS­GH yes­ter­day and the ma­ter­ni­ty ward ap­peared to be op­er­at­ing as nor­mal.

Need for ac­count­abil­i­ty

The T&T Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) wants those re­spon­si­ble for the ba­bies’ deaths to be held ac­count­able.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTNNA said the head of the de­part­ment or the Med­ical Chief of Staff at the hos­pi­tal should be im­me­di­ate­ly placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave while a com­pre­hen­sive in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­duct­ed, with ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to fol­low af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Ad­min­is­tra­tion who failed to ad­here to the Na­tion­al Neona­tal Trans­fer Pro­to­col must be dis­ci­plined ac­cord­ing­ly...The as­so­ci­a­tion will not al­low the cir­cum­stances that have caused the re­cent deaths of 7 ba­bies at the PoS­GH NICU de­part­ment to con­tin­ue to ex­ist in PoS­GH or any oth­er health­care in­sti­tu­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the TTNNA said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the TTNNA is call­ing for the fol­low­ing pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed and mon­i­tored go­ing for­ward:

1) Im­prov­ing the chances of full-term preg­nan­cies

a. In­crease pri­ma­ry care in­ter­ven­tions.

b. Re­duce the short­age of DHVs by ramp­ing up train­ing, to meet new pri­ma­ry health care tar­gets for preg­nant women.

c. Take steps to en­sure all ex­pec­tant moth­ers re­ceive An­te­na­tal care.

d. Add to fam­i­ly plan­ning coun­selling, the im­por­tance of im­prov­ing the health sta­tus of the par­ents pri­or to con­cep­tion.

2) Re­duce in­tro­duc­tion of Noso­co­mi­al In­fec­tions in NICU

a. Stop foot traf­fic by unau­tho­rised per­son­nel and lim­it foot traf­fic by au­tho­rised per­son­nel.

b. Con­tin­u­ous IPC train­ing must be manda­to­ry.

c. Nurs­ing per­son­nel to re­take con­trol in the man­age­ment of the ward.

d. Safe in­ser­tion, main­te­nance, and ap­pro­pri­ate re­moval of vas­cu­lar ac­cess de­vices ac­cord­ing to NICE guide­lines

3) Pre­vent­ing spread of Noso­co­mi­al In­fec­tions in NICU

a. Clear floor area for each in­cu­ba­tor/cot/bed must be a min­i­mum of 150 sq ft.

b. Im­ple­men­ta­tion of one-to-one nurse staffing ra­tios in neona­tal in­ten­sive care

c. Con­tin­u­ous bac­te­ria/in­fec­tious dis­ease sur­veil­lance

d. Con­tin­u­ous san­i­ta­tion and ster­il­i­sa­tion mea­sures