FilAm History Month: Nurses carry on the tradition of Filipino American activism

A portion of a gallery of those Filipino health workers of those who have perished due to the coronavirus.
Almost every day, Kanlungan adds another one to its gallery.

 

As we move into October -- Filipino American History Month, with its theme of social activism, a hallmark of Filipino American history -- we must note that today's generation of activists include Filipino and Filipino American nurses in the front lines of battling the deadly coronavirus.

Time magazine named one of the Filipino American registered nurses and a labor activist to the magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

"When I recently learned that TIME had added me to the 2020 TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world, I knew that our nurse voice of patient advocacy was louder and more resonant than ever," said Bonnie Castillo, president of the National Nurses Union, the largest labor group representing RNs in the country as she wrote in Medium.

Nurses of Filipino descent make up just 4% of the U.S. healthcare workforce, but nearly a third of registered nurse deaths due to COVID-19, according to a new report from the National Nurses United union.

On Tuesday, Sept. 29, National Nurses United (NNU) released a report, Sins of Omission: How Government Failures to Track Covid-19 Data Have Led to More Than 1,700 Health Care Worker Deaths and Jeopardize Public Health and a statement on Covid-19 data transparency. 

The report and statement condemns the failure of federal and state governments to track and publicly report transparent, accurate, and timely data on the Covid-19 pandemic. The continued lack of detailed, consistent data endangers the health and lives of nurses, other health care workers, and their patients.

“We cannot forget the deaths of so many health care workers, which includes 213 nurses,” said Zenei Cortez, RN, a president of NNU.

“These deaths were avoidable and unnecessary due to government and employer willful inaction. Nurses and health care workers were forced to work without personal protective equipment they needed to do their job safely. It is immoral and unconscionable that they lost their lives," said the Filipino American registered nurse, who works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, NNU has been tracking the deaths of U.S. registered nurses as well as the Covid-19 infections and deaths of health care workers because no one was reporting this information. The Sins of Omission report has researched and confirmed the deaths of more than 1,700 health care workers.

The NNU report includes a list of the known names of 213 registered nurses who died of Covid-19 as of Sept. 16, as well as the known names of 617 additional health care workers.

"Our state and federal governments must require hospitals and other health care employers to publicly report infection rates and deaths of their workers. We have the right to a safe workplace under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Information is a part of safety. But some employers are not telling nurses when they have been exposed or who has been infected. This is irresponsible and dangerous for nurses, health care workers, and patients.”

About 4% of registered nurses in the US are of Filipino descent, according to a Stat News estimate, but some hard-hit areas employ a larger share of this demographic. ProPublica reported that one of every four Filipinos in the the New York-New Jersey area works in healthcare, and they are four times more likely to be nurses. Filipino and Filipino American nurses comprise 20% of California's RN's.

Kanlungan, a website tracking the deaths of Filipino and Filipino American health workers around the world, has found that the U.S. has about three-times as many healthcare worker deaths than the Philippines.

The all-volunteer effort try to put a face and a story behind the statistics but it's not an easy task. They must get their information from a variety of sources and then confirmed. A more transparent effort in reporting could make it a bit easier.

Bonnie Castillo, (at microphone) was named on of TIME's most influential people in the world.

The NNU call for standardized, timely reporting between states and localities, rather than the current piecemeal approach, which undermines effective interpretation. A lag time of even a week can delay an effective response. Nurses call on all states and localities to publicly report at least the following data (for more details on what governments should report, read the statement):

• Daily reporting of data (as well as cumulative totals) on diagnostic testing and case counts at national, state, and county/local levels.
• Daily reporting and cumulative totals of data on health care worker infections and deaths at an establishment level, such as the specific hospital or business.
• Data on symptomatic cases must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels (influenza-like illness and Covid-like illness).
• Daily reporting of data on hospitalizations and deaths must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels.
• Hospital capacity data must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels; must be updated in real time; and must include total and available hospital beds by type (e.g., ICU, medical/surgical, telemetry, etc.), staffing, health care worker exposures and infections, and nosocomial (hospital-acquired) patient infections.
• Data on the stock and supply chain of essential personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels.

After a few stories focusing on the Filipino and Filipino American death rate amng healthcare workers earlier this year, it has become an "old" story and editors and reporters are on working on the next breaking story. But COVID-19 doesn't operated on news cycles and the energy level of journalists, healthcare workers of Filipino descent continue to die from the virus at alarming rates and media outlets hardly notice it anymore.

As she wrote in Medium, Castillo says of her recognition by TIME: "This award lets nurses everywhere know that our expertise is recognized, and it validates our fight to speak truth to power. It means everything to nurses to know that the world is listening.

Congress has failed to act to protect us by addressing the immediate need to scale up domestic production of PPE and other critical medical supplies. Call your Senator at 202–335–6015 and demand they pass the HEROES act now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this article is news laced with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.