Health Minister Roger Cook tells Aishwarya’s parents ‘I will help get answers’

Health Minister Roger Cook has pledged that what happened in the tragic death of Aishwarya Aswath will not happen again as he provided a further insight into yesterday’s meeting with her parents. In an exclusive interview in tomorrow’s The Sunday Times, Mr Cook said the sit down was a “powerful experience”, with Aishwarya’s parents desperately looking for answers. “I have been speaking to Aishwarya’s family for the last month,” Mr Cook said. “It’s not the first opportunity I have had to speak to them. But it was the first opportunity I had to sit down with them. “And so from that point of view, it was good to meet them. It was obviously a pretty powerful experience.” Seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath died while waiting to see a doctor at Perth Children’s Hospital on Easter Saturday. “My commitment to them yesterday was the same as it has been from day one — I will help them get answers and I will help them with their experience to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Mr Cook said. “There will always be incidents in hospitals which are regrettable from which we need to learn. “But this is an incident that we never want to see again and, from that perspective, I am determined to work with Aishwarya’s family to put all those things in place.” Mr Cook said understandably, Aishwarya’s parents, Aswath Chavittupara and Prasitha Sasidharan, were still hurting over the death of their child. “There are many things that they want to say and many things that they want answers to,” he said. “So we simply took the opportunity to listen, to answer their questions where we could and commit to helping them come on the journey with them to undertake an (independent) inquiry. “We want their assistance and insights in terms of their experience to inform that inquiry and that was the major focus of our conversation.” Read the full interview in tomorrow’s The Sunday Times.