Children’s rights group wants questions answered about death of babies
CHILDREN’S advocacy organisation, Hear The Children’s Cry, yesterday called for immediate and full disclosure of the circumstances that have led to the deaths of 18 babies while in hospital care at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston and Cornwall Regional in Montego Bay, St James.
“We are alarmed at the seemingly casual manner in which those responsible are dealing with this very serious tragedy,” the organisation’s founder Betty Ann Blaine said in a release yesterday. “We are left with the impression that these children’s lives don’t really matter,” she added.
“To say that ‘the public should not panic’ is amazing,” she said. “What should have been said instead is that, ‘We the authorities are going to provide the public with all the information required to ensure that there will be no more deaths [that are] preventable of babies in our care across Jamaica’,” Blaine said.
In the meantime, she asked Health Minister Fenton Ferguson to say:
1) What was the precise cause of death of the 18 babies?
2) Were the babies’ deaths preventable?
3) Why was the problem not arrested after the first few deaths?
4) Who exactly is responsible for the deaths?
5) How is it that you as minister of health were unaware of the 18 deaths in your hospitals?
6) How can this problem be cauterised and other babies protected?
7) How will the affected families be compensated?
“Hear The Children’s Cry wishes to express our deepest condolences to the parents, family members and other loved ones for this very sad event that has left many Jamaicans stunned and outraged. We wish for them to know that our thoughts and prayers are with them in this time of grief,” said Blaine.