Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Aaron Fran­cois, fa­ther of six-year-old Jash­er Fran­cois, says his fam­i­ly will not be mak­ing any pub­lic state­ments at this time as the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his son’s death came to a close last Mon­day.

Say­ing the mat­ter was now at a “sen­si­tive stage,” Fran­cois said his fam­i­ly was still griev­ing over the loss of his son.

“I want to thank the me­dia hous­es for the in­ter­est and their help to share our sto­ry, but at this point in time, we would re­frain from mak­ing any state­ment to the me­dia be­cause of the sen­si­tive stage of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and that kind of stuff. Every­thing is now at a sen­si­tive stage, so I want to re­frain from mak­ing any com­ments. I re­al­ly don’t want to say any­thing right now that might go in­to the pub­lic do­main and af­fect any of the out­comes. I re­al­ly can’t say any­thing,” Fran­cois said.

Jash­er, a Stan­dard One pupil of the San Fer­nan­do Boys’ RC School, died on Au­gust 7 af­ter be­ing tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment of a dry cough. His death sparked pub­lic con­cern about the qual­i­ty of emer­gency care, prompt­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to launch an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe con­vened an in­de­pen­dent pan­el of ex­perts com­pris­ing Con­sul­tant Pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr Ca­ma­nee Lutch­man; reg­is­tered nurse and qual­i­ty as­sur­ance spe­cial­ist Clau­dine Shep­pard; for­mer NWRHA CEO Dr Eliz­a­beth Per­sad; and pae­di­atric in­ten­sive care spe­cial­ist and at­tor­ney Denelle Singh. They were tasked with re­view­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his med­ical man­age­ment, the time­li­ness of in­ter­ven­tions, and the over­all pro­to­cols fol­lowed on the day of his pass­ing.

On Mon­day, the Min­istry con­firmed that the pan­el had sub­mit­ted its re­port but not­ed that a state­ment from the Fran­cois fam­i­ly had not been re­ceived with­in the ex­ten­sion pe­ri­od grant­ed to them.

To en­sure their per­spec­tive is still part of the re­view, the Of­fice of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer has for­mal­ly reached out to the par­ents.

The Min­istry said it re­mains com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy, fair­ness, and com­pas­sion through­out the process, and ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the Fran­cois fam­i­ly. The Min­is­ter al­so said fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed as the re­view con­tin­ued.