HEALTH Minister Dr Christopher Tufton says he has always acted in the best interest of public health and cautioned against comparisons between the dead babies débâcle of 2015 and the deaths of 11 babies from a resistant bacterial infection at Victoria Jubilee Hospital (VJH) between July and September this year.

Since news broke of a number of deaths among neonates at the country’s premier maternal hospital last week from an outbreak of klebsiella pneumoniae infections, Dr Tufton’s leadership of the health sector has come under public criticism, with the parliamentary Opposition baying for his head.

In a statement to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, while stressing that the deaths of the neonates should not be downplayed and apologising for the tone of the public discussions, Dr Tufton said in his seven-year stewardship of the sector he has sought to shift the narrative in how health is perceived and managed to minimise politicising the issues.

“It is unworthy to compare what transpired in 2015 because the circumstances [are] so much different. I am trying to be very gracious because I don’t want to appear to be politicising public health. That 2015 incident, for all sorts of reasons, generated significant anxiety around how the then Administration was managing the situation. In our case, we discovered a problem and we fixed the problem, and that’s the most important issue to consider,” he told the House.

In 2015, then Health Minister Dr Fenton Ferguson was eventually reassigned to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security after calls mounted for his resignation following revelation that 19 premature babies died from bacterial infections between June and September that year at University Hospital of the West Indies in St Andrew and Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay.

On Tuesday, Dr Tufton said, while he accepts the view that the health authorities could have gone public with the information, if the problem was being solved and the risk was cauterised, creating unnecessary hysteria could potentially discourage people from going to VJH, which is the sole option for some.

The health minister cautioned against undue hysteria against the background of deaths overall among newborns as these occur for various reasons. He stressed that it should be noted that there are mortality rates associated with births, pointing to 178 deaths in 2017 and an average of 150-180 deaths annually.

He emphasised that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), which was called in to assess the situation, had so far provided the ministry with a preliminary summary which corroborates those of the South East Regional Health Authority’s, attributing the bacterial outbreak to a significant patient to staff ratio, issues with cleaning, and overcrowding of the facility. Dr Tufton said he is now awaiting the final report from PAHO.

He advised that, at the time of the outbreak, the staff to patient ratio was one to seven and this has, in fact, worsened to one to eight. Dr Tufton indicated also that a shortage of technical staff has affected the effective functioning of the ancillary crew.

Grilled by Opposition spokesman on health Dr Morais Guy and Opposition Leader Mark Golding on the sequence of events and the urgency with which the outbreak was treated, Dr Tufton insisted that the matter had been escalated according to the established process and was resolved.

He noted that there may have been some lag in the timeline as, while the initial deaths from the bacteria started in July, he received information on the outbreak towards the end of August after returning from official business overseas, but stressed that by then the efforts to stem the outbreak appeared to have been working, as evidenced by a decline in the number of deaths.

Dr Tufton also reiterated that transfers for neonates to other facilities had not been an option at the time, given the overcrowding which existed and continues to present a challenge at several facilities, including at Bustamante Hospital for Children.

“This is another reason why it was so important to solve the problem as quickly as possible because patients don’t have that many options, that’s just the reality.”

He also emphasised that there is no outbreak of klebsiella at Spanish Hospital, and outlined measures and protocols being taken by the health authorities to address the outbreak at VJH and prevent further spread.

The multi-drug-resistant bacteria is associated with increased morbidity and mortality among newborns.