Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

The fam­i­ly of Cedric “Burkie” Burke, 45, wants clo­sure and be­lieve that they will get it af­ter an au­top­sy is done by a pri­vate in­de­pen­dent pathol­o­gist once the Min­istry of Health con­sents.

This was dis­closed to the Guardian Me­dia by the fam­i­ly’s at­tor­ney, Chelsea John.

John said they are still await­ing full dis­clo­sure of the med­ical records that the Min­istry has agreed to pro­vide once a next-of-kin ver­i­fi­ca­tion is done. “Be­cause of the sud­den death, the fam­i­ly is in a state of grief and shock so ul­ti­mate­ly they are look­ing for clo­sure, part of which is know­ing ex­act­ly what it is went on…and know­ing that he did not show any signs of COVID-19, to ac­cept this by word of mouth they look­ing for clo­sure and con­fir­ma­tion of his cause of death.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that all re­quired doc­u­ments to ver­i­fy next-of-kin have not yet been sent to the Min­istry of Health.

How­ev­er, the process is still on­go­ing with a re­newed as­sur­ance that Burke’s body will be kept on hold from the State’s dis­pos­al un­til his fam­i­ly con­firms the cause of death via in­de­pen­dent med­ical ad­vice.

On Sat­ur­day, the fam­i­ly made the for­mal re­quest for Burke’s med­ical records in a let­ter sent to the min­istry by John.

In re­sponse, the Min­istry of Health, through its act­ing Le­gal Ad­vis­er, Mala Kow­lessar-Tagal­lie, asked for doc­u­men­ta­tion “con­firm­ing that your Client is the law­ful next of kin of the De­ceased.”

It said that once that is pro­duced, the Min­istry had no ob­jec­tion to the dis­clo­sure of a copy of the med­ical records from Burke’s ad­mis­sion in­to hos­pi­tal on Sep­tem­ber 9 to his death on Sep­tem­ber 11.

The Min­istry al­so said it had no ob­jec­tions to the preser­va­tion of the body pend­ing the fam­i­ly’s so­lic­i­ta­tion of ex­pert med­ical ad­vice/con­fir­ma­tion as to the med­ical con­di­tion and cause of death.