'No breakdown'

Health Minister Rudyard Spencer has rushed to the defence of the Victoria Jubilee Hospital in the face of the Opposition's claims that the recent exposure of a newborn to an HIV-infected and mentally ill woman there is indicative of a general breakdown in the national health-care system.

Pointing to a host of recent failures and missteps, Dr Fenton Ferguson, who shadows the health portfolio, said the Opposition remained alarmed by the deteriorating state of the health sector in the country.

Ferguson's comments came after a breakdown in security at Victoria Jubilee, Jamaica's leading public maternity hospital, resulted in the mentally challenged women breastfeeding the newborn.

Ferguson said while the incident remained a sensitive issue, as it relates to the stigma and discrimination often associated with persons infected with HIV/AIDS, it represented a serious failure of the health-care delivery system, whether or not it was a healthy mother involved.

"The Opposition is, therefore, again calling on the minister of health to act swiftly to prevent further deterioration of the sector by putting in place better security measures at our hospitals and major health centres, even as we improve the internal systems and protocols in our institutions," Ferguson argued.

But, speaking with The Gleaner, Spencer scoffed at the Opposition's comments and described them as political.

The health minister said there were no grounds for the argument and that the Opposition's duty was clearly to oppose.

"The incident at Victoria Jubilee is a management issue, so we don't know that there is any deteriorating system," Spencer said. "There are 8,000 deliveries there per year and the one incident, as a result of the internal managerial system, can't label the system as a deteriorating one."

Attempted rape

The Victoria Jubilee breach followed the attempted rape of a female doctor at the Cornwall Regional Hospital, the discovery of decomposing corpses at the Kingston Public Hospital and the alleged mix-up between a male and female baby at the May Pen Hospital which caused trauma to the mothers and their families.

Yesterday, the DNA results for the infants and post-natal mothers involved in the apparent foul-up at May Pen revealed that both mothers had received their correct babies.

According to chief executive officer at the May Pen Hospital, Nadia Nunes-Howe, the results revealed that there was a 99.93 per cent probability that the babies were given to the correct mothers.

Nunes-Howe said in a statement that the hospital conducted meetings and reviewed records which revealed that documentation errors were made at the deliveries.

She added that the corrective measures for all the staff involved would be undertaken in keeping with the Human Resource Policies and Procedures Manual.

Meanwhile, Victoria Jubilee has rushed to implement a procedural security change in response to the incident there.

According to chairman of the board of the South East Regional Health Authority, Lyttleton Shirley, the changes were intended to provide a more secure environment for the newborn on the nursery ward and prevent any such recurrence.

In the meantime, the hospital could be staring down the barrel of a multimillion-dollar negligence lawsuit for the incident.

It is unclear if the mother will be filing a lawsuit but attorney-at-law Bert Samuels has indicated that there is precedent in Jamaican law for cases of this nature.

Samuels said legal action could be taken against the hospital on the grounds of negligence.

Special rules

"The law with respect to negligence has special rules with respect to hospital and doctor's care and, therefore, when one looks at the problem at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, what the court will be looking at is whether there was a safe system to protect the infant child," he said.

Samuels added: "One would appreciate that the breastfeeder could have been a child snatcher and the hospital has been used to and has had incidents of children being taken away and, therefore, they would have been put on notice to put security systems in place for the non-intervention of outsiders in that area, so it is under the area of negligence."

Yesterday, the Independent Jamaican Council for Human Rights also reacted to the incident at Victoria Jubilee, saying the child's rights had been violated.

"It is clear that the child's rights have been violated and the state plainly failed to correct the rights of the child and failed to protect the child from physical harm which could have fatal or permanent implications," said Arlene Harrison-Henry, chairman of the human-rights group.

"Such a situation ought never to have happened. It is tragic that an incident such as this is what triggers the implementation by the state of reasonable measures which have long existed in private institutions," she continued.

nadisha.hunter@gleanerjm.com