There is no longer a shortage of ventilator support for premature and sick babies at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) as the critical supply of circuits and tubes arrived last Saturday.
This was revealed yesterday by head of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), Dr Clyde Cave, who said six months of supplies were now in stock. He also confirmed that though the unit was out of these supplies for a week, they were not needed as no babies had challenges requiring their use.
An upbeat Cave acknowledged too that his worst fears of deaths in the unit over the October 12 weekend when the last of the supplies were used, had not happened. And he said that because of the publicity given to the crisis, the unit had received some financial help and promises of assistance.
On October 12 Cave wrote an email to senior hospital officials warning that the critical situation to which they were previously alerted “has now reached a dire crisis”. (SP)
