CSS manual negated use of drug that killed 9 babies

A Social Security Fund (CSS), manual published in 2012 says that the medication given to nine babies who died in a CSS hospital should not be injected into newborns.

The Pharmacotherapy manual carried a foreword by the current Minister of Health, Javier Diaz, who served as National Director of Services and Health Benefits in the CSS at the time. 

“Medications containing benzyl alcohol should not be given to premature babies or newborns,” warns the manual.
The document comes to light this week after the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences revealed that poisoning by this drug was the cause of the death of nine infants, between June and July this year, in the  Neonatology unit of  the Arnulfo  Arias Madrid  Hospital Complex.
Relatives of the victims were outraged at the news and the fact that authorities have not yet provided a written report on what happened.

The discovery is likely to increase pressure for the ousting of CSS director Guillermo Sáez Llorens
who appears to have been engaged in a buck passing operation with memos to the head of pharmacology at the Ministry of Health, asking if warnings had been issued about the use of the medication for premature babies, while the answer lay on his desk.
Saez Llorens and his board recently went to President Martinelli to announce that they would be naming a new hospital after the president, a move which was widely criticized. He has also had  long standing confrontations with doctors, nurses and medical technicians.