Days before her death, Dr. Susan Moore complained of racist medical treatment in a widely shared post on social media.
What We Know:
- According to a Facebook post, Dr. Moore, 52, tested positive for Covid-19 on November 29. She was admitted to IU Health North Hospital in Carmel, Indiana. A video shared with the post, straining her voice, speaks about a white doctor, identified as Dr. Bannec, who downplayed and dismissed her pain. Dr. Moore repeatedly begged for treatment, including medication, scans, and routine checks.
https://www.facebook.com/susan.moore.33671748/posts/3459157600869878
- Dr. Moore requested to receive additional remdesivir, an antiviral drug used to treat coronavirus, yet Dr. Bannec said she did not need it because she was not short of breath even though she told him she was. Although Dr. Moore already had two infusions of the treatment, Dr. Bannec argued that she was not qualified. He suggested she go home and said he was uncomfortable giving her more narcotics. “I was crushed. He made me feel like I was a drug addict,” she said.
- After being consistently demeaned and having her pain disregarded, Dr. Moore asked to be sent to another hospital where she could be provided with better care. She said the next thing she knew, she was getting a scan of her neck and lungs. The scan detected new pulmonary infiltrates- a substance denser than air lingering in the lungs- and lymphadenopathy- a lymph node disease. At this point, Dr.Moore was finally told her pain would be treated.
“You have to show proof that you have something wrong with you in order for you to get the medicine,” she said. “I put forth and I maintain if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that.”
- Even then, it was not until hours later that Dr. Moore’s pain was treated. “This is how Black people get killed when you send them home, and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” she said in the video. On Dec. 7, she was released from the hospital only to be readmitted to a different hospital 12 hours later after her temperature spiked to 103 and her blood pressure dropped. In one of her last Facebook updates, she wrote, “Those people were trying to kill me. Clearly everyone has to agree they discharge me way too soon.”
- On the 20th of December, her son Henry Muhammad told media outlets that his mother had passed away. He told The New York Times that living with sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that attacks the lungs, carries the struggle of obtaining the proper medical care. “Nearly every time she went to the hospital she had to advocate for herself, fight for something in some way, shape or form, just to get baseline, proper care,” he disclosed.
- History has shown a reoccurring theme of doctors overlooking the concerns of Black patients. Research has also shown that time and time again, that Black patients do not experience the same level of appropriate medical care as white patients do. An analysis by the Brookings Institution showed Black people died at 3.6 times the rate of white people, and Latinos at 2.5 times the rate of white people.
“I am outraged beyond words … because if what my mom thinks was true and that it was racism, and they neglected her because of that, nobody should go through that,” Muhammed said.
