Three years after the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar introduced the Covid-19 lockdown, advocacy group, Care Champions, are sharing heart-breaking memories of vulnerable and elderly people dying afraid and alone because of what the group describes as “excessive” restrictions.
The group’s founder Majella Beatty says that a Covid inquiry must examine why nursing homes and care centres refused to let any family member access their loved ones despite evidence from other jurisdictions that the blanket ban was hurting the most vulnerable, and causing real trauma to families.
She pointed to the decision by the Dutch government to allow visits – and to the Care Partner system in Northern Ireland which ensured each person in a nursing home or a care setting had a nominated person who would always be allowed in for a visit, with testing and PPE requirements, even during a pandemic.
Last week, former NPHET member, Prof Martin Cormican said that preventing visits from family to those who were dying was “inhumane”.
The stories shared by Care Champions this week are a devastating reminder of the cruelty of a policy that denied families a last farewell and caused such suffering and pain for those who were dying without the people they loved most around them.
Elizabeth Mansfield’s family say she died of a broken heart, denied family visits although she was on a non-Covid ward.
Her daughter Fidelma says that she “still lives with the heartbreak” of not being allowed to visit her mother where she was distressed and upset, and where she died without her family. Fidelma says that a system using PPE could have facilitated a designated visitor from the family.
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“Do you not love me anymore?”: Heart-breaking memories of elderly dying alone in the Covid lockdown shared – Gript
“Do you not love me anymore?”: Heart-breaking memories of elderly dying alone in the Covid lockdown shared – Gript
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