Nurse Annette White-Best had no qualms about taking the COVID-19 vaccine, but neither was she gung-ho about the jab. Actually, her younger sister, Nikeshia Smith-Blackwood, said the conversation hardly ever came up, even as White-Best tirelessly worked overtime on the frontline caring for others against a disease that would ultimately take her life.
Last week, White-Best became the fourth nurse reportedly to have died from coronavirus-related complications in Jamaica. According to official reports, the list of nurse casualties read: one nursing student, two retired practitioners, and White-Best.
White-Best was the first nurse in the island to have contracted the disease while on the job and die from it, noted Patsy Edwards-Henry, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ).
The nurse was based at the Percy Junor Hospital in Manchester – a secondary Type-C facility that in her dying days colleagues said was unable to provide critical oxygen for one of their own hooked up on drips and struggling to breathe on her own two weeks ago.
Days later, after multiple attempts at relocation, she was transferred to the already stretched Type-A University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) on her birthday, August 9. And there she died two days later.
“I think she would have had a fighting chance if she had a ventilator in time,” stated her sister Smith-Blackwood during an interview with The Sunday Gleaner on Friday.
“We feel the Government has somewhat failed us because this is somebody who went out there and sacrificed, put her life out there on the frontline and when the time came for them to take care of her, there was no ventilator. That part really hurts a lot of persons,” said the sister, who shared that her parents were taking the news of their daughter’s passing the worse.
White-Best, a florist turned nurse two years ago, “died doing what she loved,” stressed Smith-Blackwood, who spent her birthday running from one pharmacy to the next trying to find drugs that would aid her big sister’s breathing.
Those drugs would ultimately cost $140,000 but with a long in coming ventilator at UHWI, the dying nurse had no chance of surviving, reasoned her grieving relative.
“It seemed they tried everywhere and UHWI just say ‘listen, this is staff, so let’s just try and help her out’. But it was a little too late because by the time she got to UHWI, she just deteriorated over the three days. On her birthday she was practically dead,” the distraught sister shared.
Questioned if White-Best had taken the COVID-19 vaccine, the sibling said “she didn’t really express a willingness to take it. We didn’t even speak a lot about it. What I remember her saying, however, is that she didn’t want to take the virus home to her husband.”
She continued, “The nurses out there know what they are facing and at the end of the day it is a personal choice, that is my opinion.”
NAJ President Edwards-Henry explained on Friday that valiant efforts were made to relocate White-Best to a Type-A facility after she fell ill two weeks ago and was admitted at Percy Junor. At least three hospitals said they could not accommodate her before UHWI yielded.
The predicament the fallen nurse faced prompted a call for arrangements for healthcare workers caught in the COVID-19 onslaught.
“I don’t want to say priority must be given to us, because everybody is important and all lives matter. But there needs to be systems in place to care for the carer. Who cares for the carer?” Edwards-Henry queried.
She continued, “In other jurisdictions and organisations, there are systems in place to facilitate those who work in the system. There are no systems in place for the healthcare worker here. When that worker goes into the healthcare setting, that person is treated like everybody else. So I do believe that there needs to be something in place where a healthcare worker – a nurse, doctor, whomever – gets some level of attention. You work in the system, the system should work for you.”
At a press conference last week, Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton sent condolences to the family and hailed White-Best’s and her colleagues’ valiant efforts on the coronavirus frontline.
This is even as his ministry reports a less than satisfactory COVID-19 vaccine take-up among healthcare workers of 65 per cent for the first dosage, and just over 40 per cent for those who have come for their second dose. It was not immediately clear the disaggregation of the percentages.
On the weekend, Tufton posted photos of inside a COVID-19 ward with the caption: “Here is a Jamaica COVID-19 ward reality. Patients are monitored using cameras. 26 patients on one ward with two nurses. From you enter, you cannot see anyone on the outside. You can’t bathe. You can’t go to the bathroom. Get vaccinated and avoid this.”
“Another reality, people DIE! And this is how you are wheeled to the morgue,” read another caption under a photo of two porters pushing a trolley with what appears to be a covered-over corpse.
After coming under fire for the postings, yesterday the health minister defended it, saying “It’s important that the COVID conversation process involves full disclosure around the virus and its effects and impact. Both from prevention to treatment. Also, the myths and realities.
“Taking the camera into the isolation wards exposes part of the reality of COVID’s devastating impact on people. I think Jamaicans need to see this, as controversial as it might be. Hopefully persons become more informed and take better precaution to protect themselves.”
While urging all healthcare workers to take the vaccine, as she did, “as a leader” who also has sick relatives at home, Edwards-Henry explained that there may be several reasons for hesitancy among nurses – one of them is fear.
“A lot of our nurses have comorbidities. Some nurses are waiting to be cleared by their physicians. You have others who are afraid of needles, just like the general population and are waiting, hoping that the one-dose will come. And you have others who generally don’t trust the vaccination process, mostly out of fear of the unknown,” the NAJ president explained, noting that many nurses become temporarily ill after taking the jab.
Still it is imperative that all nurses, like all Jamaicans, get on board, she said.
“Persons need to just look at what is happening. We have more than 500 new cases today and we have 13 deaths, there is nowhere in the hospital to put people. It doesn’t make sense we try to fool ourselves. The Government say they are going to build field hospitals, but there is nobody to care for these people,” she stressed.
Jamaica now has 8,225 total active COVID-19 cases from 57,289 overall confirmed cases. With a positivity rate of 38.5 per cent, so far 1,285 Jamaicans have died from the virus.
On Friday, the health ministry reported that the island’s vaccination numbers were at 393,863. Of that number, 258,466 were first doses, 134,462 second doses and 935 single doses.