RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@

guardian.co.tt

The first birth for 2023 has been record­ed in To­ba­go to moth­er An­drea Dun­can, who gave birth to a bounc­ing ba­by girl just one minute af­ter mid­night.

This was re­vealed by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh as he paid trib­ute to new moth­ers on New Year’s Day.

Dun­can’s ba­by weighed 3.5 kilo­grammes.

The sec­ond New Year ba­by, al­so a girl, was born to Melis­sa Bak­er at 12.12 am in the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

Den­isha Hug­gins was the third per­son to give birth for 2023 at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty at 1.58 am.

At the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, four women gave birth at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal from 3 am on­wards.

Venezue­lan na­tion­al Keilal Gomez was the first to give birth to a daugh­ter at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal while an­oth­er Venezue­lan mi­grant Jaira Marin gave birth to a daugh­ter at 3.19 am.

The ba­by weighed 3.19 kilo­grammes. Al­so giv­ing birth were Jase-Ann Bis­nath while Ali­cia Lynch gave birth to a ba­by boy at 5.40 am.

Speak­ing to re­porters, Deyals­ingh said the Min­istry would con­tin­ue to pro­vide ma­ter­nal and pae­di­atric care to mi­grants. He said 2022 had the low­est ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty rate.

“We had two ma­ter­nal deaths, one in the pri­vate sec­tor and one in the pub­lic sec­tor which was due to com­pli­ca­tions of COVID.”

Say­ing 2022 was the best year to date for ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty, Deyals­ingh said in 2023, they planned to beef up neona­tal in­ten­sive care units across the coun­try.

“For the next PSIP, we want to put mon­ey in­to neo-na­tal units at Mount Hope, San Fer­nan­do, Port of Spain and Ari­ma. We plan to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ties, equip­ment and train­ing,” he added.

Deyals­ingh said the Min­istry planned to hire pae­di­atric nurs­es from Cu­ba. 

“We are in talks with the Cuban au­thor­i­ties up to last week on De­cem­ber 28,” he added. 

In an ar­ti­cle pub­lished by the Min­istry last Feb­ru­ary, it was stat­ed that T&T’s neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty rates are well be­low the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark set by the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN). 

The ar­ti­cle said, “While the UN Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal (SDG) 2030 sets the neona­tal mor­tal­i­ty tar­get to at least 12 per 1,000 live births, in 2021, Trinidad and To­ba­go achieved a rate of less than six per 1,000 live births.”