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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Deyalsingh: ‘Improved guides, polices on NICU management at all RHAs’

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GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
22 days ago
20250129
Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh reports to the Senate on improvements to NICUs management at RHAs, on Tuesday 28 January 2025. [Image courtesy Office of the Parliament]

Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh reports to the Senate on improvements to NICUs management at RHAs, on Tuesday 28 January 2025. [Image courtesy Office of the Parliament]

Office of the Parliament

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says his Min­istry had im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures to im­prove the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tions of pub­lic neona­tal in­ten­sive care units (NICUs) even be­fore the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) sub­mit­ted its re­port.

The PA­HO re­port came on the heels of sev­en deaths at the Port of Spain NICU, ear­ly last year.

Re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, the Health Min­is­ter said the Min­istry formed com­mit­tees be­tween 2016 and 2020 to pro­vide tech­ni­cal ad­vice and en­hance pol­i­cy, strat­e­gy, and ser­vice de­liv­ery across NICUs at the var­i­ous Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs).

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh not­ed these in­clude com­mit­tees on an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance, neona­tal care, and re­pro­duc­tive care, with up­dat­ed poli­cies, guide­lines, and train­ing in in­fec­tion pre­ven­tion.

He told the Sen­ate that these poli­cies and guide­lines are avail­able to all staff as an on­line re­source.

“More specif­i­cal­ly, with re­gard to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal,” he said, “the above guide­lines were used to up­date its ex­ist­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry user man­u­als and its stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures, and this was com­plet­ed in 2023.”

“Fur­ther, the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty con­ducts an an­nu­al in­ter­nal qual­i­ty as­sess­ment for lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices to sup­port qual­i­ty im­prove­ment,” he added.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh al­so re­port­ed that the Ja­maican na­tion­al agency for ac­cred­i­ta­tion grant­ed ac­cred­i­ta­tion to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s lab­o­ra­to­ry in April 2024—the same month in which sev­en ba­bies died from a bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion.


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