The deaths of 11 ba­bies due to a sus­pect­ed bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion may have oc­curred in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH), but the trag­ic events have left ex­pec­tant par­ents in South Trinidad rat­tled.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day spoke to sev­er­al preg­nant women who are card­ed to have their ba­bies at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. They de­clined to be in­ter­viewed on cam­era but ad­mit­ted that the deaths of the ba­bies had height­ened their anx­i­ety and fear about hav­ing their ba­bies at the pub­lic fa­cil­i­ty.

Fa­ther-to-be, Christo­pher Scott said his wife, Can­dice, was due to give birth to their first ba­by in Oc­to­ber. He ex­plained that they moved from pri­vate med­ical care to the pub­lic health sec­tor due to fi­nan­cial con­cerns. While he had no is­sue with the care she had been re­ceiv­ing at the Mara­bel­la Health Cen­tre, Scott said af­ter hear­ing about the ba­bies’ deaths at the PoS­GH he was not tak­ing any chances.

“Af­ter the events of last week and the neg­li­gence and the fin­ger blam­ing and all that, any­body would have a cause to go back to a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion to feel more safe and se­cure,” he said.

Scott called on the au­thor­i­ties to do bet­ter.

“They need to get their act to­geth­er be­cause they play­ing with peo­ple’s emo­tions. Death is a thing that we don’t plan for but it hap­pens. How­ev­er, these are things that are pre­ven­ta­tive. They say they spend­ing x amount of mon­ey but they can­not give an ac­count for the x amount of mon­ey be­ing spent on ei­ther beds or med­ica­tion or san­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties. There­fore, we don’t know what the mon­ey is be­ing spent on.”

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on this mat­ter.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to an ar­ti­cle in an­oth­er news­pa­per, the au­thor­i­ty de­fend­ed the care they pro­vid­ed at the NICU.

The au­thor­i­ty stat­ed that the neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate at the NICU had been three to four deaths per 1,000 live births for the last three years (2021-2023), which was well be­low the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion glob­al neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty fig­ures of 17 per 1,000 live births pub­lished in 2022.

The au­thor­i­ty fur­ther stat­ed, “Con­verse­ly, the SWRHA wish­es to re­mind and as­sure mem­bers of the pub­lic and val­ued clients that our In­fec­tion Pre­ven­tion & Con­trol stan­dards in the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) are strict­ly up­held, con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and the ac­cred­i­ta­tion stan­dards for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The au­thor­i­ty said it has a NICU in­fec­tion mon­i­tor­ing and man­age­ment pro­to­col to mon­i­tor in­fec­tion lev­els and ac­ti­vate mea­sures to mit­i­gate against spread and prop­a­ga­tion.

It fur­ther ex­plained that a traf­fic light sys­tem was in­tro­duced un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to ob­serve and un­der­stand the as­so­ci­at­ed risks.

“Or­ange (height­ened) alert is an­nounced when there are six ba­bies with dif­fer­ent mi­croor­gan­isms and es­ca­lat­ed to red alert once three or more ba­bies are in­fect­ed with the same mi­croor­gan­ism. Once Or­ange alert is called, all in­fect­ed ba­bies are placed in a sep­a­rate area and staff are di­vid­ed in­to two groups, in or­der to avoid the risk of cross-trans­mis­sion to the un­in­fect­ed group.”

The SWRHA said it was eter­nal­ly proud of its ded­i­cat­ed health­care pro­fes­sion­als, who are fo­cused on trans­form­ing health­care de­liv­ery with­in the re­gion, go­ing be­yond the call of du­ty to con­sis­tent­ly en­sure the de­liv­ery of ex­cel­lent pa­tient care.

The SWRHA again in­vit­ed pa­tients and clients to con­tact the Cus­tomer Ser­vice Cen­tre at 87-SWRHA (877-9742) for any mat­ter about health­care.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia spoke with of­fi­cials at South­ern Med­ical, Sur­gi Med and West Shore Med­ical, who in­di­cat­ed that there had been no uptick in the last two weeks of ex­pec­tant par­ents ex­press­ing an in­ter­est in de­liv­er­ing ba­bies at their in­sti­tu­tions.