‘They died alone’
Families, colleagues reflect on health workers killed by COVID-19 as monument unveiled in their honour
Published:Sunday | March 23, 2025 | 9:40 PMCorey Robinson - Senior Staff Reporter
Decraig Green, a psychiatric nursing assistant at the Black River Hospital in St Elizabeth, had just finished his afternoon shift and had planned to celebrate the rest of his birthday with his co-worker and friend, Patrick Henry. Henry was off work that day, but a birthday without the ‘Vibes Master’ was out of the question for Green, who pulled up to his brethren’s home.
Little did he know that their strange evening interaction would be among their last.
“When I was leaving, he said ‘Green, leave me down at the hospital’. I asked him what happened, and he just repeated, ‘Just leave me down at the hospital, man’,” continued Green, recalling how his friend clutched a little burgundy pouch and shouted to his elderly mother that he would soon return.
Henry never dared tell his mom his greatest fear, said Green, noting how his friend, also a psychiatric nursing assistant on the male ward, oddly entered the back of the car.
“I said, ‘Sit down here in the front with me, nuh’. And he said, ‘No, no; me a drive ‘round the back. Is chauffeur-driven me want today’. I never took it as anything, ‘cause I know my brethren, and sometimes that is how he runs jokes,” Green explained, adding that he took Henry to the hospital where he was later admitted and quarantined on suspicion that he had contracted the deadly COVID-19 virus.
It was then that he realised his friend had been trying to protect him in the car.
For the next few days, Henry got sicker and sicker. At one point, information circulated that he had died. Green said he bawled on hearing, but the rumour turned out to be false. Rather than feeling joyous at learning he was still alive, Henry’s colleagues saw clearly he was slipping away – especially after he was rushed to the better-equipped Mandeville Regional Hospital. Just days later, on September 25, 2021, he died.
In the hospital’s Dietetic Department, Harriette Legister-Blackwood, an attendant, was also the “life of that department”. She was the ‘fashionista’, the person in the crew who was always dancing at staff functions, trips, and even while serving sick patients on the wards, her colleagues recalled.
So, when she became sick and became one of the dozens of suspected COVID-19 patients carted in and out of the overburdened facility – some of them dead – Harriette’s friend and coworker, Brenda Forbes, also a hospital attendant, could not deal with visiting her. It is a decision Forbes said she now regrets, as tears welled in her eyes while speaking with The Sunday Gleaner last week.
“I did not go and look for her. I could not. I could not see her like that. I didn’t want to have that memory of her. To be honest, I don’t even want to talk about it,” said Forbes, now wiping the tears from her eyes.
“She loved feeding people, and she believed food must always be cooked. So even when we served the food on the ward and there were leftovers, she would always find somebody to give it to. Being around her you cannot be hungry...” charged head cook, Oniel Salmon.
“... And you cannot be sad either!” interjected Hortense Williams and Tamarsha Smith, spurring brief laughter within the sombre gathering.
On Thursday, Harriette Legister-Blackwood’s usually immaculately kept home in Black River was a fraction of its former glory. Now the yard is overgrown and the house begs to be repainted. Her daughters, who live overseas, told The Sunday Gleaner they continue to mourn her passing.
Seeing three coffins being lowered ... traumatic
Meanwhile, Monique Fagon, daughter of Cheryl Stewart-Whyte, one of the first health workers killed by the disease in St Elizabeth in 2021, said her family of four siblings was torn apart after their mother died. Most tragically, in a month five of her relatives died, three of them due to COVID-19. Seeing three coffins being lowered into one grave simultaneously was particularly traumatic for her, she said.
“When she passed, three of her children were minors. I was the eldest. So they ended up all scattered, different relatives took them because I was not able to take care of them like I would want. I think the [middle] boys were affected the most because she was the main person in their lives. They would have had counselling but it has not helped,” explained Fagon, adding that her mom had just completed her degree when she fell ill.
At the same time, widower Rohan Colquhoun, whose wife Sudeen Lynfatt worked at the Black River Health Centre when she died, said the journey since COVID-19 has been rough.
“Just mentioning it just puts me back in a little [mournful] place,” he affirmed.
“It [COVID-19] was one of the wickedest things for our family. It just took her away. The wickedest thing is that I took her to hospital, and even though she worked in healthcare, I couldn’t even get to peep on her before she died. That really hurts me,” he said, explaining that he and his wife got married 18 months before her death having been together for 14 years before that.
According to the Ministry of Health and Wellness, 53 workers in the health sector lost their lives to the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic, which – in a web of confusion, uncertainty, and fear – shuttered businesses, wiped out jobs, uprooted families, and created a divide among Jamaicans and throughout the world, regarding the use of vaccines for its treatment.
Among the dead were doctors, nurses, attendants, mental health officers, midwives, and cashiers, who, during the unveiling of a monument last week, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said, “put their lives on the line, pushing through fear and uncertainty to preserve health and save the lives of others”.
The ministry’s records outlined that the North East Regional Health Authority, which houses the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital among others, lost two of its workers; while the Western Regional Health Authority, which oversees the Cornwall Regional Hospital, lost six. The South East Regional Health Authority in which the island’s primary facility, the Kingston Public Hospital falls, saw 11 deaths; while the Southern Regional Health Authority, where Black River Hospital sits, reported the highest number of staff deaths with a count of 34. Among those who died in St Elizabeth, only Harriette Legister-Blackwood and Patrick Henry worked at the Black River Hospital. The other deaths came from other healthcare institutions within the region.
Exactly five years after the detection of the first COVID-19 case in Jamaica, the Government last Monday unveiled the monument in honour of healthcare workers who lost their lives during the fight against the pandemic. Erected at the National Chest Hospital in St Andrew, the monument reportedly cost $4 million to build. Inscribed on it are the names of 22 of the healthcare workers, and the health ministry said more names will be added in time.
Courage, dedication, and sacrifice
Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness described the monument as “not merely a structure of stone and metal. It represents the courage, dedication, and sacrifice of the healthcare workers who stood on the front line during one of the most challenging periods in our nation’s recent history. They put their duties above their fears, their patients over their own well-being, and, in doing so, they saved countless lives.”
Last week, CEO of the Black River Hospital Diana Brown-Miller, and Maria Stampp, director of nursing services, both lauded staff members at the facility for the best teamwork they said they have ever witnessed at the hospital. COVID-19, they said, was like a dark night that seemed to have had no end. The hospital is still grossly in need of resources and staffing, having exhausted all its available spaces to move the bed count from 97 to 150 over the years. Still, there is much more work to be done, even as the team is fortified with the teachings of the pandemic, they explained.
While the pandemic is now in the past, Brown-Miller is still unsettled by one COVID-19 reality.
“I think the worst part of COVID-19 was those persons died alone,” she said, as Henry’s coworkers nodded in agreement, recalling how they glanced at his dying frame through a hospital window in Mandeville.