By LARA PICKFORD-GORDON Thursday, November 22 2007

HEALTH MINISTER Jerry Narace has directed the Regional Health Authorities to review and improve existing security measures at health institutions and include in these measures, “the installation of closed circuit television cameras in key areas, in the shortest possible time.” The directive was given via the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry.

Narace said he has been given an assurance by the Board of the North-Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) that “anyone who is responsible will be made to account,” regarding the kidnapping of newborn Jeremiah Henry from the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital last Friday by a woman pretending to be a nurse.

The baby was on Tuesday reunited with its mother.

Addressing his first public function, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) launch of “Health in the Americas 2007” at the National Library in Port-of-Spain, he stressed that the Ministry took the incident at Mt Hope “very seriously” and resolved to do everything possible to ensure “we never have a recurrence of this type of incident.”

Narace said he was relieved and happy baby Jeremiah was reunited with his mother Nekeisha Noel and father Sheldon Henry. He said their pain was shared during the difficult moments and now all were rejoicing as they set to give Jeremiah the loving care and attention.

NCRHA Chief Executive Charles Mitchell said over the past few days the NCRHA’s focus was on reuniting the baby with his mother and introducing new security measures.

He said some measures were for the short and long term.

Mitchell said any patient discharged from MHWH will now have to go through “a specific rigorous process. That is in place already. The whole issue of access control is also tightened up. The issue of surveillance and detection is what we are working on right now.” He said the times for discharging babies had been “tightened” and more control over the number of visitors.

Asked why surveillance cameras had not been introduced before, Mitchell said there were constraints. He said cameras could not be placed on wards as patients were entitled to privacy at hospitals especially at the post-natal ward. However, he said there were areas where cameras could be located and the NCRHA was “in the process of attending to that.”