3-year-old child dies in Vieques, which has been without a hospital since Hurricane Maria

A 3-year-old boy was pronounced dead Wednesday night in the provisional medical clinic of Vieques, an offshore Puerto Rican town that hasn’t had a hospital since Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, and where another child died in a similar case last year.

A police report said the toddler’s mother, Fransheska Rivera, took him to the island’s Diagnosis and Treatment Center (known by its Spanish acronym CDT). Doctors then referred Rivera to a hospital in the town of Fajardo, on the Puerto Rico mainland. But on the way to the airport the boy got sicker, and Rivera rushed back to the CDT. He was reported dead at 10:35 p.m. by the same doctors who had treated him a short time before, police said. Sources close to the immediate family said the toddler had been presenting gastrointestinal symptoms and was vomiting.

Vieques residents say the child’s death is one more tragedy underscoring the lack of a hospital on an island of about 8,300 residents, and of the state and federal government failure to build a medical facility more than three years after Hurricane Maria caused an estimated $90 billion in damage and left thousands dead. With the beginning of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season only days away amid the coronavirus pandemic, Puerto Ricans fear that local officials are not ready for potential storms.

“We do not have a hospital ready. Our request has always been a hospital because we are human beings. We don’t want any family to go through the pain that we go through. And today a family is going through that pain,” said Denisse Ventura, whose 13-year-old niece, Jaideliz Moreno, died in the same CDT last year.

Jaideliz died in January 2020 after an unsuccessful attempt to transport her to a hospital on the main island. On Thursday, Ventura and other residents denounced the latest death as one more example of the devastating consequences they experience because of a lack of access to healthcare and other basic services.

‘We have an emergency room that functions with the little things it has; it’s in an improvised place, a shelter, and it doesn’t cover all the necessities that an emergency room could have like the situation yesterday,” said Zaida Torres Rodríguez, a retired nurse and community leader who is friends with the boy’s grandmother.

The 66-year-old, a former cancer patient who lost her daughter and mother to the disease and whose husband survived prostate cancer, added: “The federal and state governments have lead in their feet, they don’t care about the health of Vieques, that’s definitive. And when you deny a people of services, of movement, you are violating their rights.”

Hurricane María devastated Vieques in 2017, leaving the municipality without electricity for over a year and flooding the Susana Centeno Family Health Center. The provisional CDT was set up in an old hurricane shelter to replace the town’s devastated hospital. However, the temporary clinic has limited capacity and no intensive care units or delivery room.

A large number of Vieques residents are elderly, and many suffer from chronic conditions, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, at higher rates than counterparts in the rest of Puerto Rico. To get more advanced treatment — such as for strokes or heart attacks — patients have to be ferried or flown to the main island. However, transportation in and out of Vieques is unreliable, and some patients in need of immediate attention take commercial planes with no medical equipment.

Shortly after Jaideliz’s death, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it would provide Puerto Rico with $39.5 million to replace the devastated hospital. Construction has yet to begin. In April, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced that the government was procuring conceptual design plans for the facility, and that he was disbursing $1 million to begin work.

“We can’t wait another minute,” said Ventura. “How many more deaths? We already lost Jaideliz. Was that not enough?”

The girl’s family sued the Puerto Rican government in January, alleging violations of human and civil rights for the lack of available services in the island-municipality. The Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Journalism reported on Thursday that the island’s government is currently trying to dismiss the lawsuit.

Vieques Mayor José Corcino is calling for an investigation into the death of the 3-year-old boy, identified as Yan Hill Rivera. Corcino did not return multiple requests for comment from the Miami Herald, but had previously said that he hopes the hospital’s construction will begin early next year.

The toddler’s body was ordered to be sent to Puerto Rico’s forensic institute for further analysis.

The Hill Rivera family declined to speak publicly, requesting space as they grieve the loss of the 3-year-old. But their community is ready to stand by them, said Elda Guadalupe, a teacher and community leader whose family has a deep-rooted history of activism in Vieques.

“The community is united and interconnected. Even if we do not know each other well, we can all feel the pain. It is like a constant reminder that we are at the mercy of a health system that when we most need it, it will not be there for us,” Guadalupe said. ‘Every one of the losses we grieve.”

Guadalupe — echoing other Viequenses interviewed — said that Jaideliz and Yan are among the many lost to an insufficient medical system in Vieques that cannot respond to the basic needs of residents.

“They aren’t the only ones, and they won’t be the last,” she said.

This story was originally published May 27, 2021 at 4:16 PM.