Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh says many of the recommendations outlined in the report on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Port of Spain General Hospital were already in place, even prior to the incident.
Speaking in the Senate on Tuesday, Minister Deyalsingh was questioned whether any of the recommendations from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) were implemented. A team of three PAHO representatives submitted the report after investigating the deaths of a cluster of babies at the NICU between April 2nd and 9th, 2024.
“The Antimicrobial Resistance Committee was established on October 27th, 2016. The National Neonatal Committee was established in 2017, before the PAHO Report. The National Sexual Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health Committee was established in 2020. We reviewed all our IPC protocols during COVID, before. So the answer is: many, if not all of these, were in fact currently being used before the PAHO Report.”