Gail Alexan­der

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) can in­clude Mon­day’s death of an­oth­er ba­by at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in its in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the deaths of the 11 oth­er ba­bies there—since the case de­f­i­n­i­tion of this lat­est death match­es the oth­ers.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s query. Mark, cit­ing re­ports of the death of an­oth­er ba­by at the hos­pi­tal’s Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU), asked Deyals­ingh to state whether this lat­est death would form part of PA­HO’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the re­cent deaths of 11 ba­bies at the hos­pi­tal.

The death of the ba­by at 2 am on Mon­day was re­vealed by head of the hos­pi­tal’s NICU, Dr Mar­lon Tim­o­thy, al­though he re­port­ed it was “not linked” to the deaths at the NICU ear­li­er this month.

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said he was ad­vised that PA­HO can in­clude Mon­day’s ba­by on two counts.

“One: time prox­im­i­ty to the orig­i­nal clus­ter (of oth­er ba­bies) and two: the clin­i­cal case de­f­i­n­i­tion of this case match­es those. That is how they may in­clude it,” he said.

Deyals­ingh sent con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of the lat­est ba­by. He al­so said he want­ed to recog­nise the “in­tel­li­gence of the av­er­age man in the street who’s not be­ing swayed by ir­re­spon­si­ble ar­gu­ments”.

“I al­so want to recog­nise the sober voic­es of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and those more re­spon­si­ble voic­es who are now adding their weight to this mat­ter,” Deyals­ingh said.

He said they were bring­ing a sense of clar­i­ty to the is­sue.

“And whilst we fo­cus on those who are passed and we must, I want to thank health­care work­ers - doc­tors, nurs­es, tech­ni­cians, lab techs, pa­tient care es­corts, se­cu­ri­ty guards - be­cause we still bring to life all those pre-term ba­bies, that goes un­no­ticed, and while we must recog­nise we have one ma­jor is­sue in one ward in one hos­pi­tal, the en­tire health­care sys­tem con­tin­ues to func­tion be­cause of the ded­i­ca­tion of all our pro­fes­sion­als.”

Deyals­ingh said he thought the coun­try “should recog­nise that”.

Mark apol­o­gis­es for la­bel

Mark be­gan an­oth­er ques­tion claim­ing “in light of the con­fes­sion of neg­li­gence on the part of the min­is­ter”.

But Deyals­ingh de­clared, “I made no con­fes­sion of neg­li­gence!”

Mark asked what fur­ther steps would be tak­en to avoid fur­ther trau­ma and pain to par­ents.

Deyals­ingh said, “It’s ex­act­ly that type of rhetoric the coun­try is start­ing to see through as be­ing self-serv­ing and ought to be con­demned in the most vig­or­ous man­ner.”

Deyals­ingh said as both he and North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO said, “when the is­sue first came to light the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty went through above and be­yond the usu­al sani­ti­sa­tion cy­cles to en­sure as far as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble that there is no re­oc­cur­rence. But what’s hap­pen­ing now, there’s so much mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing put out there … be­cause it’s im­por­tant the pub­lic knows this”.

He said what made it in­to the me­dia was that a pri­vate sec­tor hos­pi­tal may have been the cause of the in­fec­tion, but he not­ed he said on Mon­day that the in­sti­tu­tion had noth­ing to do with the sit­u­a­tion.

Deyals­ingh claimed this had been per­pet­u­at­ed by this line of rea­son­ing “by those Op­po­site”. He said the UNC had al­ready poured scorn on the PA­HO re­port—which has not even been sub­mit­ted—and was ques­tion­ing the ve­rac­i­ty and in­de­pen­dence of PA­HO.

“Much as they did with the Seemu­n­gal re­port ... a doc­tor called Tim Gopeesingh was pour­ing scorn on the Seemu­n­gal re­port even be­fore it was sub­mit­ted. This is the same play­book be­ing done now with the PA­HO re­port,” he added.

When Mark be­gan an­oth­er ques­tion say­ing, “As the new Min­is­ter of Death…”, he was cut off by loud Gov­ern­ment protest and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Nigel de Fre­itas, who told him “Sen­a­tor Mark raise to your feet, re­tract that state­ment and apol­o­gise—that will not be tol­er­at­ed in­side here.”

Mark, who with­drew, was again ad­vised by De Fre­itas to do a re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy for the state­ment. Mark re­tract­ed, of­fer­ing “a hum­ble apol­o­gy”.

Mark lat­er con­clud­ed, say­ing, “Ba­bies are dy­ing here, man.”

He said he was a par­ent too and the sit­u­a­tion hurts his heart.