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Eleven babies have died in the space of a three-month period in the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the Port of Spain General Hospital (POS General). Seven of these eleven deaths took place in less than a week during this month, reportedly the result of “an outbreak” of bacterial infection.
Whether these April deaths are causally linked to the deaths in the earlier months is uncertain but things are clearly once more falling apart in the public health system, with outrageous and fatal consequences.
Photo: MSN
Replaying the evasion of accountability for the eggnog deaths at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital (St Ann’s), in 1992, apologists are already asking us to blame the system and not the people. This is a reference to the incident when 14 patients at St Ann’s died after drinking contaminated eggnog.
Despite a Commission of Inquiry, no individual culpabilities were established for the St Ann’s mass deaths of patients within the public healthcare system and no one resigned.
The media recalled for us other subsequent fatal incidents between then and now. The evasion of sanctions is the norm in our battered Republic. It is reflected in the repeated cry of a cynical public: “Nothing will come of it.”
(via Toon Pool)
In the current case of the mass killing of babies in POS General—an institution for which Terence Deyalsingh, the minister of heath, is responsible by virtue of the portfolio assigned to him—the usual tactics of deflection are being deployed.
The authorities are sternly telling us things like “we need facts” and “there will be an independent probe”. But the facts are the seven babies have died and there is apparently uncontrolled “transmission of infectious agents in a health care setting”.
What more facts do the authorities need in order to hustle themselves under competent leadership and make our public hospitals safer and something other than a place to kill people?
Perhaps read the available guidelines. See, for example, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) Guideline for Isolation Precautions: Preventing Transmission of Infectious Agents in Healthcare Settings (2007).
Underlying the request to blame “the system” may be the attempted distinction between responsibility and blame. Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds pushed this distinction at us in responding to the frightening exposures of goings-on at the Strategic Services Agency (the SSA).
He regularly ducks “blame” for the dreadful collapse of public safety, although the key agencies responsible for public safety fall within the ministerial portfolio assigned to him.
The attempted distinction of Minister Hinds is a hollow one because, realistically, ministers cannot detach themselves from the overarching concept of accountability for constitutional responsibility.
In drastic circumstances accountability requires that those at the top of a fatally failing system take full responsibility for a disaster and go or be fired. In our culture that level of accountability is diluted by a warped political culture that permits ministers of government to be given a bligh even when there are multiple fatalities by gun or bacteria.
This latest public health disaster provided a macabre background in my mind last weekend, as I watched Pantopia—the latest output of the fertile brain and sharp perception of Rawle Gibbons in the form of a musical based on the pan music of Ray Holman.
The musical carried a fully supportive story line concerning the music of Ray Holman and his early dissent from the Panorama status quo by composing his own tune for playing at Panorama.
“Somehow is music” is one among many aphoristic lines in the course of the play, (that is concise lines expressing much in a few words). It is a declaration that despite the scorn for pan in its formative years, despite its science and artistry, attempts at suppression of pan playing music stays strong.
Photo: Pan Trinbago
I intended to review Pantopia this Sunday, but the dire mass deaths in the public health system and the specious deflections deployed all of last week dictated otherwise.
The deflections of the duty of Ministers Hinds and Deyalsingh to have policies to contain wanton killing is part of the crippling disadvantages despite which not only pan music endures, but our citizens are trying to survive.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
