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Friday, July 25, 2025

Why did Justin die?

by

20140105

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan has promised a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mys­te­ri­ous death of 14-year-old Justin Mon­dezie at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) on De­cem­ber 28. He did so in re­sponse to calls from the teen's fam­i­ly who want to know what ill­ness caused his death.Justin's broth­er, for­mer jour­nal­ist Michael Mon­dezie, called for an­swers when he de­liv­ered the eu­lo­gy at the teen's fu­ner­al at the San­ta Rosa RC Church, Ari­ma, on Fri­day.

He said more than any­thing in the world, Justin want­ed to spend Christ­mas with his fam­i­ly at their Mal­oney Gar­dens home. How­ev­er, he re­mained grave­ly ill through­out the hol­i­days and did not live to see the New Year.Justin's death cer­tifi­cate states that he died of "acute res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress syn­drome lym­pho­mia pro­lif­er­a­tive dis­ease–un­der eval­u­a­tion."An au­top­sy done at the EWM­SC was in­con­clu­sive as to the cause of death and a re­port is pend­ing.

The fam­i­ly has been told the cause of death will be de­ter­mined in a month's time."Who knew when Justin first got sick about three months ago with what we be­lieved to be a stom­ach bug, that we would be here to­day, in this space, say­ing good­bye," said Michael Mon­dezie, who strug­gled to con­trol his emo­tions as he gave the eu­lo­gy."And now that this mys­tery ill­ness has pried him from our em­brace. We are all call­ing for an­swers."

He added: "There has been a lot of spec­u­la­tion over the past few days about my broth­er's pass­ing. But more than any­thing else, I be­lieve my broth­er Justin is re­mind­ing us all, through his or­deal, that to­mor­row is not promised to any of us."Justin's moth­er, Mona Black­man-Mon­dezie, was ad­vised by doc­tors not to at­tend her son's fu­ner­al. His fa­ther, Richard, said when the teen be­came ill with vom­it­ing and fever in Oc­to­ber, he was seen by a pri­vate doc­tor who di­ag­nosed gas­tri­tis, an in­flam­ma­tion of the lin­ing of the stom­ach.

"We thought it was a stom­ach in­fec­tion be­cause every­thing he con­sumed kept com­ing back up. He al­so kept los­ing weight rapid­ly, which wor­ried us to no end," said Richard. Med­ica­tion pre­scribed to Justin did not work. He was too ill to at­tend class­es at the Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School and was tak­en to the EWM­SC where doc­tors al­so di­ag­nosed gas­tri­tis and pre­scribed Gesol, an oral re­hy­dra­tion salt, along with Panadol for the fever and sent him home.

As the teen's health con­tin­ued to de­te­ri­o­rate, his fam­i­ly took him to a pri­vate health fa­cil­i­ty in Ari­ma where blood sam­ples and an A-ray were done but came back neg­a­tive.Michael said Justin was tak­en to the EWM­SC at least six times but doc­tors there would sim­ply pre­scribe med­ica­tion, which his body kept re­ject­ing, and send him home.He was not ward­ed un­til De­cem­ber 17 when his health took a turn for the worse."He start­ed bring­ing up blood and again we had to take him back to Mt Hope," Michael said.

A team of five spe­cial­ist doc­tors worked on the crit­i­cal­ly ill teen around the clock in the hos­pi­tal's In­ten­sive Care Unit but Justin's con­di­tion nev­er im­proved."His ma­jor or­gans start­ed to fail," Michael said.As the teen fought for his life, even ob­tain­ing a dial­y­sis ma­chine was de­layed and when the ma­chine even­tu­al­ly ar­rived, it was not work­ing.Michael be­lieves his broth­er would have lived if he had been prop­er­ly treat­ed in the ini­tial stages of his ill­ness

"The doc­tors ... the first re­spon­ders who treat­ed Justin did not take his com­plaint se­ri­ous­ly. They kept say­ing that it was a good thing he was los­ing weight and he should not be in the hos­pi­tal, but in school. They triv­i­alised his ill­ness," he said.

Khan: I am­re­al­ly up­set

The Health Min­is­ter said he re­mem­bered see­ing Justin when he vis­it­ed the EWM­SC just be­fore Christ­mas with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to dis­trib­ute gifts to sick chil­dren on the wards."I rec­om­mend­ed that the teenag­er be giv­en an ur­gent CT scan since the doc­tors were not find­ing any­thing wrong with him. All the tests were com­ing back nor­mal," he said.Khan added that he was "not ashamed to say that" Justin prob­a­bly died as a re­sult of gross neg­li­gence.

"I think this mat­ter has to be dealt with. I am re­al­ly up­set. I in­tend to take this very se­ri­ous­ly. The per­son in­volved in the treat­ment of this child was sup­posed to be a lit­tle more vig­i­lant in their ap­proach and in­ves­ti­gate what was wrong. Peo­ple just do not feel sick like that," he Khan, who ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the Mon­dezie fam­i­ly, ex­pressed re­gret that there was on­ly so much he could do as a min­is­ter.

He said he hopes hos­pi­tal staff in­volved in "see­ing af­ter cas­es like these un­der­stand the pain and suf­fer­ing that peo­ple go through by means of de­lay and pro­cras­ti­na­tion."The min­is­ter said when­ev­er he at­tempts to ap­ply pres­sure to chair­men of re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty boards to get their staff to per­form, he runs the risk of the unions com­ing af­ter him. How­ev­er, he said, very soon he will read the ri­ot act to all hos­pi­tal staff.

"They have to be shak­en up," he said.


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