The inquiry into the operations at the hospital’s premature babies’ ward, where two newborns died from an infection contracted from their mother in January, has not yet started, The Times has learnt.
When the death of the babies, who formed part of a set of triplets, came to light, the hospital authorities had said an internal inquiry was under way.
However, two months down the line, when asked what stage the inquiry had reached, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said the “inquiry (board) is to be set up” and could not give an indication as to when this would happen.
In January, the authorities had issued a statement saying the internal inquiry would examine how the Neonatal Paediatric Intensive Care Unit was run and what caused the death of the babies at the beginning of the month.
At the time, the unit was overcrowded due to the increasing number of multiple births resulting from in vitro fertilisation. Five women had given birth to four sets of triplets and a pair of twins in the span of a few weeks.
A ministry spokesman had said the mother was the first to suffer from the infection, which she then passed on to the babies while giving birth. It remains unclear whether the mother contracted the infection from hospital.
The babies’ deaths had come to light when members of the Parliamentary Committee on Assisted Procreation held a press conference outside the unit and noted it was overcrowded.
Nationalist MP and GP Jean Pierre Farrugia, who chaired the parliamentary committee, said the outbreak of infections was caused by the overcrowding. He said the two babies had died as a result of an infection contracted by another four babies, though these were fine.
When contacted for a reaction to the fact that the inquiry had not started, Dr Farrugia said it was up to the Health Ministry to ensure it was carried out.
Noting his term of office as committee chairman expired last October, Dr Farrugia said, in his opinion, the way to solve the problem of overcrowding in the ward was to legislate on the matter so that not all fertilised ova would be implanted into a woman.
When the case about the babies’ death came to light, Health Minister Joseph Cassar had said there was “no cause for alarm” because the infection was controlled.
However, the case spurred paediatric consultants to call for the urgent regulation of assisted procreation in Malta.
Bioethics Consultative Committee chairman Michael Asciak said one of the problems was that a foreign embryologist visited Malta once every three months to implant fertilised eggs into women.
This meant such women were batched and then gave birth about the same time, translating into an overload on the hospital’s maternity services. This could result in multiple births and posed a risk to the health of the babies.
Leading consultant paediatrician Simon Attard Montalto had said implanting more than two embryos in a woman undergoing in vitro fertilisation was “irresponsible and unacceptable”.