Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says a third au­top­sy may have to be con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine the cause of death of six-year-old Jash­er Fran­cois.

Speak­ing to re­porters at a Ca­roni lease dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the child’s death as “a very trag­ic, heart-rend­ing sit­u­a­tion”.

“As a moth­er, grand­moth­er, and just as a hu­man be­ing, it is heart-rend­ing,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“That’s why, im­me­di­ate­ly when I found out, I asked the min­is­ter to set up an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­tiga­tive team. That team has start­ed work­ing. Last night, the min­is­ter gave me a brief re­port, but we will give it time to see what we can pull out of it.”

She dis­closed that two post-mortem re­ports have al­ready been com­plet­ed, but fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tion may be nec­es­sary.

“He told me there were two post-mortem re­ports. We will have to mesh the two to­geth­er and maybe get a third opin­ion to come up with what re­al­ly went wrong. I don’t want to pro­nounce on it un­til that in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said she had not yet spo­ken with the child’s fam­i­ly and did not con­firm whether she would at­tend the fu­ner­al.

“I have not had the op­por­tu­ni­ty yet to call the fam­i­ly,” she said. “I’ll leave (the de­ci­sion on at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al) un­til that day comes,” she said.

Mean­while, a four-mem­ber team of ex­perts spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned by Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe on the in­struc­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter is ex­pect­ed to com­plete their in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Au­gust 20.

The in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­gat­ing team in­cludes Dr Ca­ma­nee Lutch­man, Con­sul­tant Pae­di­a­tri­cian at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Clau­dine Shep­pard, a reg­is­tered nurse with ex­pe­ri­ence in Qual­i­ty As­sur­ance, for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the North­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Dr Eliz­a­beth Per­sad and Pae­di­atric In­ten­sive Care Spe­cial­ist Denelle Singh, who is an at­tor­ney and the for­mer Se­nior Le­gal As­so­ciate at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of T&T.

In a state­ment on Mon­day, Dr Bo­doe said the com­mit­tee’s man­date was to re­view the case and de­ter­mine whether the prop­er stan­dard of care, clin­i­cal judge­ment and pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties were up­held.

Jash­er passed away at the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day af­ter be­ing ad­min­is­tered an in­tra­venous drug. He had been ad­mit­ted for a dry cough but died af­ter be­ing giv­en the drug. A first au­top­sy re­vealed he died from as­pi­ra­tion pneu­moni­tis, like­ly trig­gered by vi­ral pneu­mo­nia.

How­ev­er, a sec­ond pri­vate­ly com­mis­sioned au­top­sy re­vealed the child died from as­pi­ra­tion pneu­moni­tis—in­flam­ma­tion of the lungs caused by in­hal­ing vom­it or stom­ach con­tents. It al­so list­ed Pleur­al pe­techi­ae—of­ten linked to oxy­gen de­pri­va­tion or trau­ma; cyanosis of the ex­trem­i­ties—bluish dis­coloura­tion of hands/feet due to lack of oxy­gen in the blood; Marked cere­bral oede­ma—sig­nif­i­cant swelling of the brain and acute re­nal in­jury—sud­den kid­ney dam­age, like­ly due to shock.

As the team con­ducts the probe in­to Jash­er’s death, it is still un­cer­tain whether the med­ical per­son­nel who ad­min­is­tered the drug have been sent on leave. —With re­port­ing by Jesse Ramdeo