KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Board of the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) has responded to concerns raised by Portland Western Member of Parliament Daryl Vaz about what he said was the “unsanitary” conditions under which incubators were being transported amidst the dead babies’ scandal.

Vaz had released a photograph, which showed a flatbed truck transporting what appeared to be baby incubators and related equipment to the institution.

In a release Monday night, the hospital’s Chairman Sterling Soares described the picture as alarming. Soares said the hospital’s guidelines, with respect to acquiring health-care equipment, are clear.

According to him, they are ordered from overseas and delivered from the wharf in either crates or boxes. They are then assembled at the hospital by engineers who demonstrate proper care, including how to clean and sanitise the units.

Soares said he requested a report regarding when the last set of such equipment was delivered to the hospital.

He was advised that a delivery was made on September 18, as a donation through the Programme for the Reduction of Maternal and Child Mortality (PROMAC).

The donation consisted of infant warmers and carriers, photo-therapy lamps, along with a recovery bed and stretcher.

After being removed from the boxes, the equipment was assembled in the Annex on Ward 11, sanitised, commissioned, and sent to the respective areas of use, the release said.

Soares said that, in light of the records of the hospital, he did not know what to make of the photographs supplied to the media.