The re­cent trag­ic deaths of ba­bies at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal con­tin­ue to draw the pub­lic’s at­ten­tion and crit­i­cism

And right­ly so, giv­en the fact that more and more par­ents are com­ing out of the wood­work to re­veal hor­ror sto­ries of deaths and oth­er re­lat­ed is­sues with­in the unit.

Fur­ther­more, while the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) has been sep­a­rat­ing the re­cent deaths of sev­en ba­bies in ear­ly April from some of the oth­er com­plaints—now num­ber­ing 18, it is safe to say the pub­lic will not be con­vinced all is well at the health­care in­sti­tu­tion un­til there is a de­fin­i­tive con­clu­sion to this mat­ter.

This is why the work of the three-mem­ber Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion team now here to con­duct an in­de­pen­dent probe in­to the mat­ter is so im­por­tant to the ef­forts of the NWRHA to re-es­tab­lish pub­lic con­fi­dence, not on­ly in neona­tal care, but over­all pub­lic health­care pro­vid­ed by state in­sti­tu­tions.

Hav­ing said that, the NWRHA has al­ready start­ed off on the wrong foot by de­lib­er­ate­ly with­hold­ing the iden­ti­ties of the PA­HO team mem­bers who are present­ly on the ground con­duct­ing the probe.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s con­fer­ence an­nounc­ing the team’s ar­rival, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­fused to share these de­tails un­der the guise that he was tak­ing a hands-off ap­proach to the probe. NWRHA CEO An­tho­ny Blake, mean­while, out­right­ly re­fused to re­veal the spe­cial­ists in­volved when con­tact­ed by the me­dia.

Cit­i­zens are al­ready ap­pre­hen­sive about such state-sanc­tioned ex­er­cis­es, giv­en that even com­mis­sions of en­quiry, the biggest plat­forms avail­able for such in­ter­ro­ga­tion, al­so bring lit­tle by way of hold­ing to ac­count in­di­vid­u­als who may be neg­li­gent or guilty of malfea­sance.

We are thus per­plexed that the NWRHA would feel with­hold­ing the iden­ti­ties of the PA­HO team will help its cause. In­deed, ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the spe­cial­ists’ ex­per­tise will on­ly help the NWRHA, and by ex­ten­sion Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley him­self, to val­i­date the com­mit­ment to leave no stone un­turned in get­ting to the bot­tom of the prob­lems with­in the PoS­GH NICU.

In fact, the PA­HO team’s find­ings may very well help to pro­vide not on­ly the NWRHA but oth­er re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties with a tem­plate for bet­ter neona­tal care, hence the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing that these in­di­vid­u­als are in­deed fit for the pur­pose of this ex­er­cise.

Trans­paren­cy in the cur­rent PA­HO probe is thus crit­i­cal. While it is a giv­en the NWRHA would want to keep cer­tain de­tails of the fi­nal re­port close to its chest, the pub­lic must be kept abreast of what is hap­pen­ing.

The re­al ques­tions then are will the PA­HO team get full co­op­er­a­tion from NWRHA of­fi­cials in­volved in this fi­as­co; will the par­ents in­volved get a chance to give their sto­ries to the team; will the re­port be made pub­lic and will those who may be cul­pa­ble in the in­ci­dents be held to ac­count?

Un­doubt­ed­ly, the PA­HO spe­cial­ist team will al­so pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions for im­prove­ment, giv­en the fact that some­thing is now dras­ti­cal­ly wrong at the PoS­GH NICU, but will the Gov­ern­ment be com­mit­ted to mak­ing the dras­tic changes nec­es­sary?

Nonethe­less, we hope that by the end of the ex­er­cise, cit­i­zens will be able to rest as­sured that T&T will nev­er have an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion of this na­ture again.