PUBLIC Defender Arlene Harrison Henry has exculpated the staff at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and special care nursery at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) in the spread of deadly bacterial infection of 13 pre-term babies at the facility between June 2015 and October 2015.

Eight of the newborns died during the summer of 2015, but details of the deaths were not disclosed to the nation by health officials until October 2015 after the media started to report on the issue.

“There is no evidence of negligence on the part of any medical practitioner or hospital personnel at the UHWI. Neither was there any evidence of medical negligence on the part of any hospital staff in the treatment, care and management of pre-term babies who passed. The staff at the special care nursery and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit performed their duties with skill and diligence, and acted reasonably and responsibly, particularly under the prevailing circumstances,” Harrison Henry stated yesterday in her report on the deaths of pre-term newborns at the UHWI.

She said, however, that operations at the hospital were “severely handicapped” by shortage of resources and stressed the absence of a board of management at the time.

“The innocent pre-term babies, given their severe vulnerabilities, were patients in a hospital facility that was grossly under-resourced in critical areas,” Harrison Henry concluded.

The public defender further stated that the concept of an “outbreak” of bacterial infection among neonates at the facility was “purely a media creation”.

“The word (outbreak) was adopted by all and sundry and used even by persons in the health sector to describe the events at the neonatal unit, thereby perpetuating the notion of an outbreak,” the report stated. “It is clear that the medical chief of staff, Professor Trevor McCartney, did not categorise any of the infectious happenings as an outbreak. Neither did he accept the term outbreak as an applicable description for what transpired,” Harrison Henry asserted.

The public defender, meanwhile, has recommended that the UHWI, and the NICU and special care nursery in particular, should be refurbished, retooled, and brought up to the standard of a modern facility.

She said that it is hoped that nothing in the report would prejudice any of the parties involved in disputes arising from the “sad series of events” at the UHWI, as her office was merely drawing conclusions based on evidence and findings.

The report coincides with a fresh wave of controversy over the death of four babies at Victoria Jubilee Hospital last month, with doctors concluding that tests proved that the newborns contracted the bacteria from their mothers’ vaginal tracts and not the hospital.

Forty-two babies were infected with health care acquired bacteria between the UHWI and the Cornwall Regional Hospital, of which 18 did not survive. News of the bacterial spread and deaths stirred public outrage, leading to the resignation of then Health Minister Dr Fenton Ferguson after he came under severe pressure from the public and the Opposition for his ministry’s handling of the matter.