Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has con­demned what he de­scribed as the politi­cis­ing of the deaths of ba­bies at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH).

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Min­istry of Health’s head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain, the Min­is­ter said, “It is un­for­tu­nate that the is­sue, whilst of great na­tion­al im­por­tance, it is un­for­tu­nate that it has now been politi­cised and politi­cised to a point where if we don’t treat with the mis­in­for­ma­tion out there, it can threat­en not on­ly the pub­lic health­care sys­tem but al­so the pri­vate health­care sys­tem.”

Less than two weeks ago, the par­ents of at least sev­en ba­bies who died be­tween April 2 and April 9 at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the PoS­GH lob­bied for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing their ba­bies’ deaths. Pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters were al­so is­sued by ad­di­tion­al fam­i­lies over the last sev­er­al days. The ba­bies, all un­der 32 weeks old, died from sep­sis. The par­ents have al­so since trig­gered le­gal ac­tion against the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, cit­ing med­ical neg­li­gence.

Yes­ter­day, of­fi­cials from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, who ar­rived on the week­end, met with of­fi­cials at the au­thor­i­ty to com­mence an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths.

In putting the tragedy in­to “con­text” Deyals­ingh said, “We run a pub­lic health­care sys­tem in which there has been a very un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent in one ward and one de­part­ment of one RHA.”

He not­ed that the pub­lic health­care sys­tem ac­cept­ed will­ing­ly every com­pli­cat­ed preg­nan­cy from the pri­vate sec­tor.

The Health Min­is­ter, how­ev­er, lashed out at Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er UNC mem­bers who claimed that Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to op­er­a­tionalise the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal had re­sult­ed in the deaths of the ba­bies.

Deyals­ingh said con­trary to the claims, the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty does con­duct med­ical pro­ce­dures.

“For the Op­po­si­tion to in­sist that Cou­va is closed is just an out­right un­truth and it is un­for­tu­nate how we fall for it, and let me re­it­er­ate the Wendy Fitzwilliam Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal has al­ways been func­tion­ing.”

Deyals­ingh al­so con­tend­ed that the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty is not out­fit­ted with the in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments to as­sist neonates.

“I have a brief from UDe­COTT which says as far as the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal is con­cerned, there is no NICU. It was a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal, it was a four-bed spe­cial care ba­by unit for less ur­gent cas­es.”

Deyals­ingh al­so stat­ed that a protest on Sat­ur­day out­side the hos­pi­tal, call­ing for it to be opened, had ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions.

“The protest ac­tion in­spired by the UNC at Cou­va on Sat­ur­day dis­turbed the op­er­a­tions of the fa­cil­i­ty, where 20 pa­tients were card­ed to have cataract surg­eries. They en­dan­gered the life of staff and pa­tients who were card­ed for cataract surg­eries.”

The Health Min­is­ter said due to un­cer­tain­ties over whether or not the protest ac­tion would have con­tin­ued on Sun­day, of­fi­cials were al­so forced to can­cel sched­uled surg­eries.