The Minister abuses his institutions

Dear Editor,
With each passing day the Minister of Health is increasingly becoming more of an embarrassment to the country’s health sector and ultimately, the government.  He regularly launches into a tirade against public health institutions and hardly has anything good to say about them, especially the Georgetown Hospital where the latest maternal death took place.
The death of Evita Reno Singh triggered another outburst from the Minister of Health.  This latest tantrum by him may have made good political sound bites but in announcing that his Ministry was launching an investigation into the death, the Minister was in fact going against his own Ministry’s protocols on how these deaths are treated.

The Minister ought to know that it is the established protocol that when a maternal death occurs, it is the responsibility of the health facility at which the death took place to, within twenty-four hours, to notify the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the event.  The institution is also required to immediately launch an investigation into the death.
The report of that investigation must be submitted to the CMO within seven days, following which the CMO will have an Expert Committee examine and decide on the next step that needs to be taken.  It is the CMO who has to make the necessary pronouncements.
The Minister has no say except to earn political mileage.  The desire for such mileage however should not come at the expense of lambasting the public health institutions.
Naomi Gillis