Nursing ranks are filled with Filipino Americans. The pandemic is taking an outsized toll on them
Debbie Accad, 72, a clinical nursing coordinator for the Detroit VA Medical Center, died from complications of the coronavirus on March 30. Celia Yap-Banago, 69, a “fireball” of a nurse who worked for 40 years at a hospital in Kansas City, died last week. Both women were just weeks away from retirement.
Araceli Buendia Ilagan, 63, a nurse-manager in the surgical ICU, died March 27 at the Miami hospital where she had worked for 33 years. Also lost were Ali Dennis Guillermo, 44, a registered nurse who worked the night shift at Long Island Community Hospital and happily took on extra work for colleagues; Daisy Doronila, 60, a nurse at a New Jersey jail where inmates fell ill; and Noel Sinkiat, 64, who worked at Howard University Hospital for 41 years and had been planning the long motorcycle trip he was to take after his upcoming retirement.
