Health Minister Joseph Cassar says there is “no cause for alarm” in the hospital’s premature babies’ ward, where an infection which led to the death of two babies this month has been “controlled”.

Three MPs held a press conference at Mater Dei Hospital on Saturday reiterating that IVF regulation could decrease child mortality, overcrowding and infection.

The MPs, members of a parliamentary committee which drew up a law on IVF and called for embryo freezing, are Nationalists Jean-Pierre Farrugia and Frans Agius and Labour MP Michael Farrugia.

A spokesman for Dr Cassar said he was “very upset” by their actions and strongly disagreed with their comments.

The spokesman said an investigation was underway to establish how six babies were infected, two of whom died.

“The infection was controlled immediately. It is not spreading. An investigation is going on but, although the main blame seems to have been placed on the hospital for not having enough beds, that may not be the only reason,” the spokesman said, adding deaths were not rare with very premature multiple births and not all deaths were definitely caused by an infection.

The inquiry also aims to establish whether the infection was acquired from hospital or brought in by the mother. The MPs argued that an outbreak of infections in the Neonatal Paediatric Intensive Care Unit was the result of overcrowding.

Dr Cassar does not accept embryo freezing and instead believes Malta should adopt a treatment used in Greece and Australia called oocyte vitrification, which is the freezing of oocytes (premature eggs) from women before fertilisation. “So you’re not going into the ethical side of having created life and disposing of it,” Dr Cassar’s spokesman said.