Three Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion ex­perts, who have been se­lect­ed to probe the deaths of ba­bies at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, have ar­rived in the coun­try and al­ready en­gaged North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) of­fi­cials as part of their ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

This was re­vealed by NWRHA CEO An­tho­ny Blake dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Health head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“Our com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty re­mains un­wa­ver­ing through­out this process. This morn­ing, the man­age­ment team of the NWRHA would have met with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Yes, PA­HO is here, they would have come in the coun­try last night, that in­ves­ti­ga­tion team, and would have swift­ly moved to meet with the man­age­ment of the NWRHA.”

Blake said sev­er­al mat­ters were dis­cussed dur­ing the meet­ing with PA­HO of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the scope of ref­er­ence for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, “and to re­quest from the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty rel­e­vant doc­u­ments and to sched­ule in­ter­views.”

“And I want to say that we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing PA­HO with all the in­for­ma­tion they need and ac­cess to all the rel­e­vant per­sons in terms of in­ter­views mov­ing for­ward,” he said.

Asked to name the PA­HO of­fi­cials, Blake in­di­cat­ed he was un­able to do so.

The PA­HO of­fi­cials will al­so be li­ais­ing with ex­perts around the world vir­tu­al­ly on the mat­ter as part of their process.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh al­so made it clear that he will not be in­volved in the in­quiry.

“The Min­is­ter of Health did not meet with PA­HO, the tech­ni­cal peo­ple met with PA­HO. I, as min­is­ter, will not be get­ting in­volved in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, so no one can say that the Min­is­ter in­sert­ed him­self in­to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Deyals­ingh said.

“PA­HO is do­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, hav­ing been in­vit­ed by the Min­istry of Health through the of­fice of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, who is the fo­cal point for PA­HO, so I have no role in ei­ther meet­ing with them at the air­port, talk­ing to them, I will not be meet­ing with them.”

Deyals­ingh al­so warned against the pub­li­ca­tion of the PA­HO re­port pre­ma­ture­ly.

“The re­port has to be read, it has to be vet­ted by the le­gal of­fi­cers. I can­not give you a com­mit­ment now that it will be made pub­lic and I will give you an anal­o­gy, when the re­port for the Life­s­port pro­gramme un­der Anil Roberts and the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar came out, it point­ed to sig­nif­i­cant crim­i­nal charges to be laid and you know why no crim­i­nal charges were laid, be­cause Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the re­port pub­lic in the Par­lia­ment too soon, so no­body could have been held ac­count­able.”

Deyals­ingh, who ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the dead ba­bies, al­so main­tained the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will not be rushed.

“It will take as long as it ought to take to have a com­plete, thor­ough, trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I, as min­is­ter, will not be putting a time frame on it.”

He al­so dis­missed claims that the source of the in­fec­tious bac­te­ria which claimed the ba­bies’ lives em­anat­ed from a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion. He cau­tioned that such in­ac­cu­ra­cies could im­pact op­er­a­tions at the med­ical in­sti­tu­tions.

“We have 92 NICU beds across our pub­lic health­care sys­tem, the pri­vate sec­tor has two, which they on­ly de­vel­oped re­cent­ly. The rea­son why I am say­ing this is that in ad­dress­ing some of the un­for­tu­nate re­port­ing, it was said a pos­si­ble source of the in­fec­tion was from a pri­vate fa­cil­i­ty, San­ji­vani. May I state here, now, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, we have re­ceived no ba­bies from that in­sti­tu­tion and that is why I say if we don’t treat with this is­sue, it has the po­ten­tial of af­fect­ing pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tions.”

Deyals­ingh al­so rub­bished claims that St Clair Med­ical was named in the pub­lic do­main as the source of the in­fec­tion.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the head of In­fec­tion Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol at the NWRHA, Dr Dar­rel Jones, was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave fol­low­ing the out­come of the par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh con­firmed that no oth­er NWRHA of­fi­cial had since faced any ac­tion.

Dur­ing the open­ing of the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as­sured that Gov­ern­ment would leave no stone un­turned in an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths of the ba­bies. He fur­ther stat­ed that he was al­so look­ing for­ward to the find­ings of PA­HO’s in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The par­ents of at least sev­en ba­bies who died be­tween April 2 and April 9 at the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit at the PoS­GH have called for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing their ba­bies’ deaths. The ba­bies, all un­der 32 weeks old, died from sep­sis.

The par­ents have al­so ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion against the NWRHA as they de­mand an­swers.