Poots to question Belfast Trust heads over pseudomonas review

Health Minister Edwin Poots is to question the chief executive and chair of the Belfast Trust on Thursday about the findings of an iinterim report on the pseudonomas outbreak.

The Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) is investigating the four deaths at hospitals in Belfast and Londonderry in December and January.

It said the Belfast Health Trust should have declared the outbreak sooner, and criticised a lack of communication between health officials.

The review team also found there was no common approach across neonatal units for declaring an outbreak.

Mr Poots told the BBC on Wednesday: "I think the Belfast Trust has answers to give, and I will be challenging them on these issues.

"I think that it's vitally important that whenever letters go from chief medical officers, they're taken seriously and they're responded to in a timely and appropriate fashion."

He was speaking after the RQIA interim report was presented to the health committee at Stormont on Wednesday.

The independent review team, led by Professor Pat Troop, concluded that the bug was linked to water from contaminated taps in neonatal units.

They found that a lack of co-ordination between staff in health trusts during the outbreak may have impacted on how decisions were made.

The team said it believed the most likely way the bug spread to babies was the use of tap water in washing during nappy changes.

It has recommended that in future only sterile water is used for washing babies in neonatal units.

The review also said that a nurse reported a leaking roof in the Royal Jubilee Maternity's neonatal unit six days after a baby was diagnosed with pseudomonas.

The first stage of the review addresses the causes and impact of the outbreak, and the full report is due by the end of May.