The family of a young teen whose death was blamed on the lack of a functioning hospital and life-saving medical equipment in Vieques, Puerto Rico is suing the U.S. territory’s government for violation of human and civil rights.
Jaideliz Moreno Ventura, 13, died last year after suffering flu-like symptoms while living in Vieques, a smaller island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Vieques has not had a functioning hospital since it was destroyed during Hurricane Maria more than three years ago. Emergency funds to rebuild the small island’s only hospital were approved two weeks after Jaideliz’s death, but the facility still hasn’t been rebuilt.
Jessica Moraima Ventura Pérez, Jaideliz’s mother, has been demanding accountability around her daughter’s death from government officials as well as administrators of health services at the local and federal level, saying that her “daughter will not die in vain.”
“They all owe us an explanation and swift action to make sure more people don’t die due to the lack of basic health services on this island of United States citizens who have waited three years to receive word of what is going to happen to them when lives are at stake,” Ventura Pérez said in a statement last year when she joined Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., as her guest for last year’s State of the Union address.
Velázquez, who is Puerto Rican, pressed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for months to release aid for Vieques to rebuild its hospital following the devastating hurricane.
“The family of Jaideliz Moreno Ventura have been through a tremendous amount of pain and they are right to claim that the medical services available to Jaideliz were terribly inadequate and had they been better, the outcome for their daughter could have been different,” Velázquez told NBC News in a statement.
Former FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor said last summer that the funding process for the hospital is still underway and they continue to work with local officials on the project. In the meantime, they will continue to provide funding to keep a $4 million temporary hospital running in Vieques.
Velázquez said she will remain committed to working “at the federal level and maintain communication with the government of Puerto Rico to right this grave inequality and injustice.”
Jaideliz’s family is also suing the medics who treated the teen prior her death and the administrators of the only medical facility in Vieques for alleged medical malpractice.
When Hurricane Maria destroyed Vieques’ hospital facilities, residents had to go makeshift tents set up in the building’s parking lot receive services. They later moved into Vieques’ only shelter, a facility meant to house people during hurricanes or other natural disasters.
“My daughter fought for her life for over five hours. The least I can do for her is fight for us to have access to a decent health system,” Ventura Pérez previously told NBC News in Spanish.
“Maybe if someone else would have fought for us to have a hospital, my daughter would be here with us today,” she said at the time, adding that her daughter dreamed of growing up to join the Army, like her father, an Iraq War veteran.
The family is also asking the court that the defendants, who include officials from the U.S. territory’s Health and Justice Departments, to pay no less than $2 million in compensation to make up for funeral and medical expenses as well as the trauma they suffered by Jaideliz’s death, according to Puerto Rico’s Center For Investigative Journalism, who first reported the lawsuit.
The office of Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi, who took office in January, told the Center for Investigative Journalism in a statement that “he is committed to ensuring that Vieques has an adequate health center with the services that are essential,” adding that he is working to address the situation alongside Vieques Mayor José Corcino Acevedo and Health Secretary Carlos Mellado “so that cases like this are not repeated.”
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
