By Usha Lee McFarling, STAT News, April 28, 2020
Debbie Accad, 72, a clinical nursing coordinator for the Detroit VA Medical Center, died from complications of the coronavirus on March 30. Celia Yap-Banago, 69, a “fireball” of a nurse who worked for 40 years at a hospital in Kansas City, died last week. Both women were just weeks away from retirement.
Araceli Buendia Ilagan, 63, a nurse-manager in the surgical ICU, died March 27 at the Miami hospital where she had worked for 33 years. Also lost were Ali Dennis Guillermo, 44, a registered nurse who worked the night shift at Long Island Community Hospital and happily took on extra work for colleagues; Daisy Doronila, 60, a nurse at a New Jersey jail where inmates fell ill; and Noel Sinkiat, 64, who worked at Howard University Hospital for 41 years and had been planning the long motorcycle trip he was to take after his upcoming retirement.
As the coronavirus pandemic takes a devastating toll on health care workers, death notices published in recent weeks starkly show that it is hitting Filipino Americans — who make up an outsized portion of the nation’s nursing workforce — especially hard.
Comments (0)