Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste hopes that the de­ci­sion-mak­ers at the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the deaths of the ba­bies in their care.

A to­tal of 11 ba­bies have re­port­ed­ly died at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit in the past sev­er­al months, a sit­u­a­tion which has led to sev­er­al law­suits from griev­ing par­ents and prompt­ed Gov­ern­ment to ask the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) to do an in­de­pen­dent probe in­to the mat­ter.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bap­tiste de­scribed the trag­ic loss of ba­bies in such cir­cum­stances as quite un­for­tu­nate. He added that staff at many in­sti­tu­tions were con­sis­tent­ly de­prived of re­sources, sug­gest­ing this may be the un­der­ly­ing is­sue.

Bap­tiste em­pha­sised that nu­mer­ous work­ers are per­form­ing mir­a­cles with­out the nec­es­sary re­sources be­ing pro­vid­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, he said he hoped the probe would bring the de­sired re­sults, since his­to­ry has shown that lit­tle is ever achieved even af­ter such ex­er­cis­es.

“I want them to in­ves­ti­gate, and you know, they will take it from there. Of course, gen­er­al­ly, I will put it this way, I am cer­tain that the cry out will be the same cry out as we hear else­where. I am hear­ing about equip­ment that has been mal­func­tion­ing for months up­on months, if not, in some in­stances, years, and noth­ing is done about it,” he said.

He added, “I would like to hope if there is some­one to get in trou­ble, it’s the de­ci­sion-mak­ers and not the per­sons who just fight to make ends meet while fight­ing to get things done with lim­it­ed re­sources.”

The PSA pres­i­dent said his union, which rep­re­sents over 2,500 NWRHA work­ers, is al­so ready to rep­re­sent those who may be im­pli­cat­ed in the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.