RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

The Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is ful­ly func­tion­al and the staff mem­bers re­main ded­i­cat­ed and pro­fes­sion­al in car­ry­ing out their du­ties. The North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) said so in a press re­lease yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, the NWRHA is ea­ger­ly await­ing the find­ings of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing con­duct­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO). In a re­lease, the NWRHA said PA­HO was re­quest­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter by the Min­istry of Health. The NWHRA has al­so launched an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

In the wake of ex­ten­sive me­dia cov­er­age and pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters trig­gered by the trag­ic and un­for­tu­nate deaths of pre­ma­ture in­fants at the NWRHA’s NICU, the au­thor­i­ty said it was im­por­tant to pro­vide the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion with some con­text.

“There has been a lot of spec­u­la­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion put in­to the pub­lic do­main, which, giv­en the le­gal ac­tions tak­en by af­fect­ed par­ties, we at the NWRHA are not in a po­si­tion to cor­rect. The NWRHA is con­strained from speak­ing pub­licly on the specifics of any of the events that oc­curred at all, and in par­tic­u­lar with re­gard to the clus­ter of ba­bies who passed away be­tween the 4th and 9th April, 2024,” the NWRHA said.

“This notwith­stand­ing, we think it im­por­tant to share some in­dis­putable facts, if on­ly for gen­er­al knowl­edge and to as­sure our cur­rent and fu­ture pa­tient pop­u­la­tion. There has been no col­lapse or break­down of the health­care sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This was an un­for­tu­nate and ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ment. 

“The na­tion’s health­care fa­cil­i­ties are ful­ly func­tion­al, in­clud­ing the NICU at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the thou­sands of health­care pro­fes­sion­als who go out to work night and day to care for the na­tion’s sick, re­main ded­i­cat­ed and pro­fes­sion­al in car­ry­ing out their du­ties,” it added.

Mor­tal­i­ty rate at PoS­GH NICU—eight per 1,000 live births in 2023

The re­lease stat­ed that NWRHA’s NICU ac­cepts the small­est and sick­est ba­bies from all the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, some small­er than 600 grammes (1.3 lbs), who spend, on av­er­age, close to three months in the NICU be­fore be­ing dis­charged home. “The av­er­age ad­mis­sion rate is 33 per month.”

In 2023, there were 2,169 live births across the en­tire NWRHA; of that num­ber, 403 or 19 per cent were ad­mit­ted to the NICU. 43 per cent of the ad­mis­sions were ba­bies less than 2,500 grammes (5.5 lbs), while 21 per cent were less than 1,500 grammes (3.3 lbs). Of those ad­mit­ted to the NICU, sad­ly, 19 passed away, re­sult­ing in a neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate of eight per 1,000 live births.

In 2022, the neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate was 6.2 per 1,000 live births. There were few­er con­gen­i­tal anom­alies.

The re­lease al­so stat­ed that ac­cord­ing to a World Bank re­port in 2021, the neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rate for some of our neigh­bours in the Caribbean was as fol­lows:

Bar­ba­dos: eight per 1,000 live births

Suri­name: 11 per 1,000 live births

Ja­maica: ten per 1,000 live births

Guyana: 17 per 1,000 live births

Caribbean Small States: 11 per 1,000 live births

The NWRHA stat­ed it is deeply com­mit­ted to ad­her­ing to es­tab­lished stan­dards of care en­dorsed by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies and “con­tin­u­al­ly strives to en­hance care to meet the evolv­ing needs of our Trinidad and To­ba­go.”