Nursing slots to be doubled after preemie infection at haredi hospital

"This is news that will have a positive effect on the treatment of preterm infants in the country and ensure proper and safe treatment for low-birth-weight infants."

By JUDY SIEGEL
Long empty hospital corridor (illustrative) (photo credit: INGIMAGE)
Long empty hospital corridor (illustrative)
(photo credit: INGIMAGE)
Following the temporary closing of the neonatal intensive care unit at a Bnei Brak hospital due to the serious infection of a newborn, Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman said he would “double the nursing job slots” in all the country’s premature baby units.
The newborn at Ma’ayanei Hayeshua Hospital was infected with a bacteria strain resistant to antibiotics.
 
“This is news that will have a positive effect on the treatment of preterm infants in the country and ensure proper and safe treatment for low-birth-weight infants,” the minister said of the Health Ministry's decision.
 
However, Litzman did not explain how he will be able to send twice as many specially trained nurses to neonatal intensive care units, which are known to be very difficult places to work because of the infants’ constant need for attention, monitoring and life-and-death responsibility. As a result, there has long been a shortage of such nurses, and the State Comptroller has in recent years criticized the ministry several times for not increasing manpower and doing enough to fight nosocomial (in-house) infections in the units.
 
Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether the ministry had allocated special incentives to increase the number of neonatal-intensive-care-unit nurses, the ministry would say only that more nurses had graduated this year and that some could be expected to work in the units.
 
When asked why the doubling on job slots was announced by the haredi minister only the day after the news of the Ma’ayanei Hayeshua infection broke, spokesman Eyal Basson said “the matter has been under discussion for a long time, and today we were able to announce it.”
 
The doubling will add 121 new nursing job slots to neonatal intensive care units in three stages starting in January, the ministry said.
 
The Bnei Brak unit was closed temporarily, and high-risk pregnant women were transferred to other hospitals, it ministry added.
Magen David Adom and United Hatzalah were told not to bring women in labor to the hospital’s emergency room. The ministry and its unit for the prevention of infections are in direct and continuous contact with the hospital’s medical director, Prof. Mordechai Ravid and the neonatal intensive care unit teams, it said.