Of­fi­cials at a pri­vate hos­pi­tal are deny­ing that the cause of an in­fec­tion that led to the deaths of sev­en in­fants at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU)at the Port-of-Spain Ma­ter­ni­ty De­part­ment stemmed from them.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed San­ji­vani Women’s Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day and spoke with an of­fi­cial who said none of the in­fants who died be­tween April 4 to 9, as claimed by the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty were ever at the hos­pi­tal or card­ed to be de­liv­ered at the in­sti­tu­tion.

The of­fi­cial added that the hos­pi­tal is the on­ly pri­vate hos­pi­tal in the Caribbean with its own Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit and has not had cause to trans­fer an in­fant to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s NICU in over a year.

It was re­port­ed that an in­fect­ed in­fant from a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion was trans­ferred to Port-of-Spain NICU re­sult­ing in the spread of an in­fec­tion that claimed the lives of sev­en in­fants with­in a week.

At­tempts were made to con­tact Dr Mar­lon Tim­o­thy who is the di­rec­tor at San­ji­vani and the head neona­tol­o­gist at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal but up to late yes­ter­day evening there was no re­sponse from him, de­spite emails be­ing sent.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) Idi Stu­art en­cour­aged the pop­u­la­tion to stick with the pub­lic health sec­tor.

He said apart from some of the same staff work­ing in both sec­tors, he claimed there are some pri­vate hos­pi­tals with­out reg­is­tered med­ical staff.

Asked if cit­i­zens should avoid the pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties be­cause of the re­cent deaths of ba­bies at one hos­pi­tal, Stu­art said: “Oh def­i­nite­ly not! Def­i­nite­ly not!”

“Don’t be­lieve that all of those pri­vate hos­pi­tals in Trinidad and To­ba­go are up to stan­dard. Or have qual­i­fied staff. We would have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the Min­istry of Health on a pri­or oc­ca­sion that we have pri­vate hos­pi­tals with­out reg­is­tered nurs­es,” he al­leged.

Stu­art added that the deaths of the ba­bies high­light­ed a need for the health sec­tor ac­cred­i­ta­tion coun­cil which would en­sure that all health fa­cil­i­ties ad­here to in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices. He said that had this been done, along with prop­er spac­ing of the cots to about eight feet apart and prop­er nurse-to-pa­tient ra­tio, the deaths could have been avoid­ed.