Racism ...the real pandemic COVID-19

#MIRRORBLACKBRITAIN 2020: SHOCK HEALTH DIVIDE

- ADENIKE ADENITIRE

My father’s final words to me as he held an oxygen mask to his face to help him breathe were simply: “My beautiful daughter.”

He looked at me and kept repeating those words, his familiar smile visible through the clear plastic. And as I looked in at him from the entrance of the ambulance where I stood with my mum, it seemed like forever since I had seen that smile, as the two days leading up to that moment were grim.

I had painfully witnessed my usually charming and fiercely independent dad rapidly become a shadow of his former self, unable to eat, stand or barely talk.

Upon arrival that night the paramedics quickly assessed he had seriously low levels of oxygen in his body. I was unable to contain my tears or my composure as he waved goodbye, still smiling.

That was the evening of Thursday, April 2. When we called the hospital early on the Friday morning we were told that he had tested positive for Covid-19.