A North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) of­fi­cial has been placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the out­come of par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a se­ries of ba­by deaths at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH).

The de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to Dar­rel Jones, lead of the NWRHA’s In­fec­tion Pre­ven­tion Con­trol Unit, was made by the au­thor­i­ty’s board of di­rec­tors and an­nounced via a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day.

The re­lease said, “As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion ma­tures, the NWRHA may make fur­ther rec­om­men­da­tions for sus­pen­sion if deemed nec­es­sary to ad­vance the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The re­lease did not iden­ti­fy the em­ploy­ee by name but Guardian Me­dia con­firmed it was Jones via his ac­count on the em­ploy­ment-re­lat­ed so­cial me­dia plat­form LinkedIn and a source with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

The re­lease specif­i­cal­ly re­ferred to the sev­en ba­bies the au­thor­i­ty pre­vi­ous­ly said died of neona­tal sep­sis be­tween April 4 and 7.

How­ev­er, it went on to ad­dress four oth­er ba­bies who died pri­or to the pe­ri­od, al­beit un­der sus­pect­ed sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances that were iden­ti­fied by lawyers for the fam­i­lies this week.

“The au­thor­i­ty al­so wish­es to ad­vise that it will make a fur­ther state­ment as it re­lates to the ad­di­tion­al neonates for whom it has al­so re­ceived pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters,” it said.

It al­so re­ferred to an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be con­duct­ed by Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) of­fi­cials.

“The board of di­rec­tors and the man­age­ment of the NWRHA wish­es to re­it­er­ate its com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in re­spect to this dif­fi­cult and painful sit­u­a­tion and we look for­ward to co-op­er­at­ing ful­ly with the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” it added.

Mean­while, lawyers for the fam­i­lies of ba­bies yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed their call for sta­tis­tics on ba­bies who died at the health­care fa­cil­i­ty since Jan­u­ary 1.

At­tor­ney Sue Ann De­osaran, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, re­newed the call in her lat­est le­gal cor­re­spon­dence to at­tor­ney Alana Bisses­sar, of Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide and Jacelon, which was re­tained to rep­re­sent the NWRHA.

De­osaran said, “How on earth could the NWRHA ex­pect the pub­lic to have any con­fi­dence in it as a pub­lic health provider when it is re­fus­ing to dis­close such a crit­i­cal sta­tis­tic?”

“This in­for­ma­tion be­longs to the pub­lic and the NWRHA’s con­tin­u­ing fail­ure and/or re­fusal to dis­close same has left our clients with the un­mis­tak­able im­pres­sion that there is a sin­is­ter con­spir­a­cy to ma­li­cious­ly with­hold such in­for­ma­tion be­cause it wish­es to ma­nip­u­late and mas­sage the sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta and hos­pi­tal records to down­play the true ex­tent of this dis­as­ter,” she added.

De­osaran al­so com­plained over the NWRHA’s de­lay in dis­clos­ing the med­ical records of the 11 ba­bies iden­ti­fied by her and her col­leagues as pos­si­ble sub­jects of a class-ac­tion med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit.

On Tues­day, Bisses­sar wrote to the fam­i­lies’ le­gal team in­di­cat­ing that the de­lay in dis­clos­ing the records was be­cause the NWRHA had to make pho­to­copies be­cause they are not elec­tron­i­cal­ly stored.

De­osaran al­so not­ed that Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh gave as­sur­ances over the dis­clo­sure while speak­ing on the is­sue in Par­lia­ment.

“We are yet to be pro­vid­ed with any of our clients’ med­ical notes and records as promised de­spite the ex­pi­ra­tion of his (Deyals­ingh’s) self-im­posed dead­line and pub­lic com­mit­ment,” she said.

“One does not have to be a rock­et sci­en­tist to un­der­stand why this is so im­por­tant to our clients in light of their le­git­i­mate fears that the med­ical notes and records could be fraud­u­lent­ly al­tered to man­u­fac­ture and fab­ri­cate a de­fence for the NWRHA when there is no ba­sis for same.”

De­osaran’s most re­cent cor­re­spon­dence pri­mar­i­ly sought to de­tail what tran­spired with twins El­la and Esme Moli­no, who died at the hos­pi­tal on March 18 and April 4.

The oth­er ba­bies iden­ti­fied by De­osaran and her col­leagues are Kae’Jhene Kemi­ah Charles, Crys­tell Pre­cious Mir­a­cle, Aarya Raya Chater­goon, Amil­ia Williams, Ro­mani Williams, Skiye Samuel, Jay­den Al­lis­ter Pierre, and twins Amari and Kyrie George Bha­gan.

Thus far, pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters have been sent on half of eight of the 11 ba­bies.

Sep­a­rate let­ters itemis­ing the claims in re­la­tion to each of the ba­bies have to be sent, as sep­a­rate law­suits will have to be filed be­fore a High Court judge de­cides whether they can be joined for the pro­posed class ac­tion law­suit.

The fam­i­lies’ lawyers have promised to send oth­er let­ters in re­la­tion to the re­main­ing ba­bies af­ter they com­plete in­ter­views with them.

In the let­ter, De­osaran al­so re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion on a ba­by who was re­port­ed­ly trans­ferred from a pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion pri­or to the Moli­no twins’ deaths and was no­ticed by the Moli­nos based on the lev­el of care it re­ceived from doc­tors and nurs­es at the hos­pi­tal.

“Why was this ba­by not prop­er­ly iso­lat­ed to min­imise the risk of trans­mis­sion? Why was the med­ical staff not wear­ing prop­er PPE and wash­ing their hands and prop­er­ly sani­tis­ing in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished and re­quired health­care pro­to­cols for the NICU?” De­osaran asked.

“What is the present sta­tus of this ba­by?—Did that ba­by die or was the PoS­GH able to save that ba­by’s life? And if so, why was sim­i­lar care not af­ford­ed or giv­en to our clients’ healthy ba­bies who did not have any form of in­fec­tion at the time they were placed in the NICU?” she added.

While De­osaran com­mend­ed the NWRHA for agree­ing to pay the cost of pri­vate psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­selling for her clients, she sug­gest­ed that more could be done.

“It is dis­ap­point­ing, how­ev­er, that no oth­er form of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance was of­fered for the griev­ing moth­ers and we, there­fore, anx­ious­ly await your pro­pos­al in this re­gard and we refuse to be­lieve that the NWRHA could find mon­ey to hire one of the largest law firms in the coun­try to seek its in­ter­est but can­not of­fer one red cent by way of as­sis­tance or com­pen­sa­tion to these fam­i­lies,” she said.