Photo via
Dr. Linda Burke/YouTube, @AutismDrMom/Twitter
December 23, 2020, 2:01 pm
Dr. Susan Moore, a Black woman, died of COVID-19 after releasing a video from her hospital bed in which she accused her doctor and other medical staff of ignoring and dismissing her pain, only agreeing to do tests she asked for after begging them. She also said she had to plead with her doctor to receive anti-viral medication that has shown in trials to be effective for treating the illness.
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Fellow doctors had to fight to get Moore to another hospital after she began to fear for her life, but they were too late. After weeks of battling, she died on December 22.
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Moore posted her video to Facebook on December 4 specifically accusing Dr. Eric Bannec of mistreatment and neglect, adding several text updates to the post as she tried to get her story out there.
“I had to beg to get the Remdesivir because Dr. Bannec said my chest x-ray was normal, ” she wrote. “I then had to beg for a CT of my chest which I finally got and it showed large mediastinal lymphadenopathy right lower lobe infiltrate in a new left lower lobe infiltrate.”
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Even after the CT scan, Moore alleged that Bannec only allowed her two infusions of Remdesivir and refused her pain medication for her neck, leaving her crying out of agony and telling her that she “can just go home right now.” She said he performed no physical exam, not even listening to her lungs.
After having spoken with both a patient advocate and the chief medical officer of the hospital in order to get adequate care, she was discharged before she was in stable condition, according to Dr. Carmen Brown. The second to last update on the Facebook post was made from the new hospital after her symptoms resurged.
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“Those people were trying to kill me. Clearly, everyone has to agree they discharge me way too soon,” said Moore. “They are now treating me for bacterial pneumonia as well as Covid pneumonia.”
The final update simply says: “On biPap being transferred to ICU.”
In the video, Moore says that Bannec treated her like she was addicted to drugs and stated a belief that she would have been treated better if she had been white.
“You have to show proof that you have something wrong with you in order for you to get the medicine,” she said. “I maintain if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that. And that man [Bannec] never came back and apologized.”
The medical neglect of Black patients, particularly Black women, is a well-documented reality that has killed countless people because doctors tend to assume they’re exaggerating their symptoms, especially pain. In 2005, a study by the National Academy of Medicine found that the racial disparities in the rate of illness and early death cannot be explained by “insurance status, income, age, [or] severity of conditions.”
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According to many, many Black women who have survived poor medical treatment, this has not changed over the last 15 years.
*First Published: December 23, 2020, 2:01 pm
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