Senior Reporter
akash.samaroo@cnc3.co.tt
As the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) prepares to send a three-person team to investigate the deaths of eight babies at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley is urging the public to have faith in this country’s healthcare system and not sound the gong that it has collapsed.
Speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall yesterday, Rowley said the PAHO team will be in T&T to start the investigation before the end of the month.
Asked about the composition of its members and their areas of expertise, Rowley said, “PAHO has identified the three people, the (Health) Minister said PAHO wanted to know the information we had and based on that information they would choose people who fit, and they have now done that. So, in a few days or so we will probably get names.”
However, the PM said the public should not judge the entire health sector over this incident.
“I want to give the country the assurance that our hospitals are safe, we have had an issue in one ward, unfortunately the outcome has been quite disastrous, but our hospital system is not the collapse-zone that some people make it to be,” Rowley said.
He added, “Let us not use this instance, which is quite disastrous at one location to sound the gong, or the message that the health system has collapsed and that we should lose confidence in the health system.”
He reminded that prior to this incident, the statistics painted a favourable picture, particularly with newborns.
“We were very proud of our infant mortality rate. This development here is at variance with what was happening in our system. And I say this so you will know that we know what is better. We were well below the level that was required to qualify as a progressive nation with respect to infant mortality. And here comes this incident, so we need to find out what has taken us off track,” he said.
Asked if he was satisfied with the healthcare system, he said, “If I was satisfied, I would have said so, I am not satisfied because what has happened is not what we are accustomed to so I can’t be satisfied with that.”
Prior to his media briefing, the Northwest Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) released a statement confirming the head of the Infection Prevention Council (IPC) at the PoSGH had been sent on administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigations into what it called the “demise of the seven neonates at the NICU”.
Asked to comment on that development, Rowley said, “Those are management procedures and I won’t get into, I expect that the management that is responsible on location, the minister that has the Cabinet responsibility and the Government that has overall responsibility, that we will all identify our responsibilities. As I said yesterday (on Wednesday), there are processes to be followed.”
On calls for Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh to resign following the baby deaths, he said, “There is no minister more responsible than the Prime Minister, and they are calling for my resignation all the time. Do you think I should resign too? Deyalsingh reports to me, I should resign too according to that argument.”
He also slammed the United National Congress (UNC) for politicising the issue while refusing to be a part of the solution.
“And today, as the babies die in the PoSGH, they refuse to send anybody to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament to look into the healthcare system in T&T. But they are out there crying crocodile tears for what happened in PoSGH and hoping to use it politically. There’s a word in the dictionary for that, it is called ‘ghoul.’ They are ghouls where crime is concerned and where the deaths of those children are concerned. All they see is political opportunity and all I see is pain and heartache,” Rowley argued.
He said it was the same UNC that did not lift a finger to fix the dilapidated central block of the PoSGH.
“I don’t know about you all, but these people make me feel to puke!” Rowley asserted.
Asked about the public’s disenchantment with probes into incidents due to the feeling that true justice is seldom the outcome, Rowley said there are certain insulations in the public sector that complicate the process.
“We have great difficulty in assigning best practice management to our situations, especially in the public service, because there are a whole lot of hoops that apply, and in some instances, there is stasis. We know what the disciplinary process is in the public service and it is not one that engenders effective action. In fact, it is designed to bring about protection as opposed to one designed to bring about extraction of wrongdoing or non-performance,” he lamented.
He said he was confident PAHO will do a professional job.