Josephus Weeks, nephew of Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan who passed away Wednesday in Dallas, told CNN his uncle Thomas didn’t have a chance “because he’s black and poor.”
“I feel he should have been treated better the first time around. He’s the only person that has died from Ebola here in America. He’s a black man. He’s poor. Didn’t have insurance. Came for a visit and went to the hospital. If he were a different name or color he probably would have been living today.”
The AP reported:
Ebola victim, Thomas E. Duncan, said he’d recently traveled from West Africa, was in severe pain — rating it an eight on a scale of 10 — and had a fever that spiked to 103 degrees, enough to be flagged with an exclamation point in the hospital’s record-keeping system.
Duncan, displaying symptoms that could indicate Ebola, underwent a battery of tests during his initial visit to the Dallas emergency room before eventually being sent home with a prescription for antibiotics, his medical records show.
The Liberian man would become the only person to die from the disease in the U.S…
…Duncan died Wednesday, almost two weeks after he first sought help. He was 45, according to the records. Relatives said he was 42. The discrepancy could not be immediately resolved.
Josephus Weeks, Duncan’s nephew, said his uncle’s care was “either incompetence or negligence.”
Either way “there is a problem, and we need to find the answer to it,” he said, adding that it was “conspicuous” that all the white Ebola patients in the U.S. survived “and the one black man died.”
Only a fraction of the documents are related to the first visit. Most are related to Duncan’s care after he was admitted to the hospital.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who reviewed some of the records, said the care after Duncan’s second ER visit was “impeccable.”
Thomas Eric Duncan from Liberia passed away on Wednesday.
Duncan was put on dialysis Tuesday. His kidneys had shut down. He passed away on Wednesday morning in Dallas.
