Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Keron Cum­mings, the fa­ther of the coun­try's first sex­tu­plets, has one re­gret.He wished he had lis­tened to the ad­vice of some doc­tors and rel­a­tives and sent his wife over­seas to give birth. "If I could do it all over again I would have sent my wife abroad," Cum­mings told T&T Guardian as he broke his si­lence yes­ter­day, ex­press­ing con­cern over the af­ter­care giv­en to his ba­bies.

And while both Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan and chair­man of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) Dr She­henaz Mo­hammed claimed every­thing pos­si­ble was done to pre­pare for the ba­bies' ar­rival, hos­pi­tal sources told the T&T Guardian con­flict sur­round­ed the con­sent form for the cae­sare­an-sec­tion surgery.While the con­sent form is nor­mal pro­ce­dure for pa­tients un­der­go­ing surgery, the T&T Guardian learned that one was draft­ed spe­cial­ly to dis­tance the NCRHA from any po­ten­tial med­ical-neg­li­gence law­suit.

How­ev­er, re­li­able sources said the con­sent form was re­vised be­cause of re­sis­tance from some doc­tors, who de­scribed it as "not prop­er."A T&T Guardian ex­clu­sive re­port­ed on Tues­day that lo­cal and over­seas spe­cial­ists rec­om­mend­ed that ex­pec­tant moth­er Pe­tra Lee-Foon should be sent over­seas to en­sure the sex­tu­plets re­ceived the treat­ment they re­quired.

Con­cerns were raised af­ter two of the ba­bies – Kaelon Nasir and Pae­ton Christo­pher Lee – died from in­ter­nal bleed­ing. The fifth-born of the sex­tu­plets, Per­sia Meleigh, con­tin­ues to bat­tle with pneu­mo­nia.While he is thank­ful to the med­ical team who looked af­ter his wife at the Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal, Cum­mings is up­set with Khan and Mo­hammed.

He took Khan to task for re­port­ed­ly sug­gest­ing close to $5 mil­lion worth of equip­ment was pur­chased for his ba­bies. He is al­so an­noyed with Mo­hammed for her com­ment that the sur­vival rate among sex­tu­plets was four out of six. "The hos­pi­tal was short of equip­ment to be­gin with. We were con­cerned about the af­ter­care," he said. "The Min­is­ter of Health promised us that every­thing would have been put in place.

"It is ob­vi­ous that things were not put in­to place as we ex­pect­ed.""In any case," he point­ed out, "even if $5 mil­lion was spent, it was not on­ly to fa­cil­i­tate our chil­dren. That mon­ey was spent be­cause the hos­pi­tal was lack­ing that equip­ment to be­gin with.