Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has called for an­swers on whether or not a new com­pa­ny with lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence in sani­ti­sa­tion was hired to han­dle clean­ing at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU). He al­leges the com­pa­ny was quick­ly re­moved and re­placed fol­low­ing the deaths of sev­en ba­bies at the NICU.

Bo­doe raised con­cerns dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, on the PA­HO re­port in­to the deaths of the ba­bies which oc­curred be­tween April 2-9.

The re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh. It cit­ed a host of de­fi­cien­cies in the NICU, giv­ing a 29 per cent com­pli­ance rat­ing on In­fec­tion and Pre­ven­tion Con­trol (IPC). It al­so con­tained nu­mer­ous rec­om­men­da­tions.

Bo­doe said the 29 per cent com­pli­ance rat­ing, with best prac­tice, begs the ques­tion as to whether or not the in­fants were giv­en the best chance to live.

He said, “The find­ings once again high­light the se­vere short­com­ings of the pub­lic health sec­tor un­der this Gov­ern­ment and this Health Min­is­ter.

“What is more alarm­ing is that the min­is­ter, in­stead of ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this trag­ic dis­as­ter, now re­sorts to blam­ing the pub­lic and mem­bers of the me­dia for ‘cher­ry pick­ing’ in re­port­ing on the find­ings.”
Bo­doe said the re­port al­so spoke to pos­si­bly sub-stan­dard clin­i­cal prac­tices and short­com­ings in sani­ti­sa­tion mea­sures and in­ad­e­quate nurs­ing staff.

He claimed it had come to his at­ten­tion that dur­ing the time the tragedy oc­curred in the NICU, a new sani­ti­sa­tion com­pa­ny was en­gaged at the PoS­GH with lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence in sani­tis­ing a NICU. He claimed when the clus­ter of deaths oc­curred, the com­pa­ny was prompt­ly re­moved and re­placed by a more ex­pe­ri­enced one who had done the work be­fore.

“I leave that out there. That’s some­thing that needs to be tak­en up, some­thing I put out in the pub­lic do­main for some sort of an­swer and whether, in fact, this is true and whether this would have been re­spon­si­ble for some of the is­sues,” Bo­doe said.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said all re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties con­tract goods and ser­vices as they see fit and nei­ther he nor the min­istry would get in­volved. The min­is­ter re­ferred ques­tions about the claims made by Bo­doe to the ap­pro­pri­ate CEO.

Bo­doe al­so not­ed that on sani­ti­sa­tion mea­sures, the PA­HO re­port rat­ed com­pli­ance at 64 per cent. He al­so ex­pressed shock there was no per­son­nel re­spon­si­ble for IPC at a high lev­el with­in the hos­pi­tal.

Bo­doe said when the re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment, he asked Deyals­ingh about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of PA­HO’s rec­om­men­da­tions, and the min­is­ter said many were al­ready be­ing prac­tised in the health­care sec­tor.

“If all of these mea­sures were in place, why did all these ba­bies die? Some will have an­oth­er word for his re­sponse but I’ll just ask whether this was an un­truth...This Gov­ern­ment takes no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for any­thing,” he charged.

Bo­doe al­so ac­cused Deyals­ingh of at­tempt­ing to “spin” the re­port. He queried what “clar­i­fi­ca­tion” the min­is­ter want­ed to seek from PA­HO.

“The find­ings are clear. PA­HO is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­cred­it­ed body. Gov­ern­ment asked PA­HO to do the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I trust he’s not try­ing to cast as­per­sions on this well-recog­nised agency’s com­mit­tee,” he asked.

Bo­doe claimed no de­fin­i­tive word was giv­en by Deyals­ingh on what would be done to pre­vent a sim­i­lar tragedy from re­cur­ring at PoS­GH or at any oth­er pub­lic NICU. He called for ac­tion to be tak­en against those re­spon­si­ble for the ba­bies’ deaths.

His col­league, Rudranath In­dars­ingh, said if Deyals­ingh had any de­cen­cy he would have of­fered his res­ig­na­tion.