Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) Idi Stu­art says the deaths of sev­en in­fants at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal last month will be in vain if the Gov­ern­ment does not bring leg­is­la­tion for an in­de­pen­dent body to re­view all health in­sti­tu­tions.

Stu­art made the call for the Health Sec­tor Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Bill (2013) to be brought back for de­bate in Par­lia­ment dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day. He first called for this af­ter the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty is­sued a me­dia re­lease last month fol­low­ing the deaths of sev­en ba­bies at the PoS­GH Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit (NICU) from bac­te­r­i­al sep­sis.

“We hope the pub­lic at large will join us in our call to the Min­istry of Health to re­turn that bill, which has been on the cards to be im­ple­ment­ed...We re­al­ly hope the Gov­ern­ment does the need­ful and does not al­low those ba­bies’ deaths to be in vain,” Stu­art said.

In a What­sApp re­sponse, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said he will have to con­firm with his le­gal team when the leg­is­la­tion will be brought to Par­lia­ment.

The deaths were in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO). On April 26, Prof Nali­ni Singh, a pae­di­a­tri­cian from the Glob­al Health and Epi­demi­ol­o­gy, George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty; Dr Grisel Ro­driguez, a clin­i­cal mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist and head of Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy, Cen­tro de Asis­ten­cia Med­ica So­ri­ano in Uruguay and Dr Gillian Birch­wood, a new­born in­ten­sive care spe­cial­ist and head of the Neona­tal Care In­ten­sive Unit at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal, Bar­ba­dos, com­plet­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths of the sev­en ba­bies, which the NWRHA said took place be­tween April 4 and 9. In a me­dia re­lease on April 26, the Min­istry of Health said the doc­tors are to sub­mit a re­port on their find­ings.

Stu­art said since the deaths and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, there have been some changes at the PoS­GH NICU.

“While there have been min­i­mal changes, ob­vi­ous­ly the sani­ti­sa­tion has been ramped up but for it be main­tained on a sus­tained ba­sis, will re­quire that ex­ter­nal body to come and con­stant­ly re­view,” he said.  

Stu­art said his as­so­ci­a­tion met with staff at the hos­pi­tal who de­scribed the at­mos­phere as “ten­u­ous.”    

Mean­while, re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the PA­HO re­port on the deaths, Deyals­ingh ad­vised the me­dia to con­tact PA­HO on this. A call was made to PA­HO, but we were told to email the ques­tions. This was done at 4.30 pm and up to late yes­ter­day evening no re­ply was re­ceived. Stu­art al­so called for the NWRHA to ex­pe­dite its in­ten­tion to com­pen­sate the par­ents of the sev­en ba­bies. The set­tle­ment of­fers, how­ev­er, were re­ject­ed by the fam­i­lies.

Stu­art said while the set­tle­ment of­fer ex­empts the NWRHA from wrong­do­ing, he called for a speedy end to this for the ben­e­fit of the griev­ing par­ents while all oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions and le­gal wran­glings take place. Aside from the sev­en ba­bies, rel­a­tives of 12 oth­er in­fants have all sued the NWRHA claim­ing neg­li­gence in the deaths of their chil­dren. To date, the NWRHA has been served with 15 pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters ac­cus­ing it of neg­li­gence in the deaths of 19 new­born ba­bies.