Our everyday heroes

Suddenly people in the United Kingdom are noticing how dependent their healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS), is on Filipino migrant workers. Broadcaster Piers Morgan spoke in awe and admiration about the: “amazing number of Filipinos working in the NHS and unsung heroes like so many. It’s worth bearing in mind when we talk about immigrants in this country, these are the immigrants currently saving people’s lives. Coming here and actually enriching our country and doing an amazing job.”

They haven’t been mentioned before, even though a House of Commons report from last year found that at least 18,500 Filipinos work for the NHS. They form the third largest ethnic group in the Health Service, second only to British and Indian.

They are even being named, and their stories told in the broadsheets and newscasts: Leilani Dayrit, Melujean Ballesteros, Oscar King Jr., Elbert Rico, Amor Padilla Gatinao, Elvira Bucu, Donald Suelto, Leilani Medel, John Alagos, Lourdes Campbell and Linette Cruz. But the recognition is coming too late for them to know about it. They are among the dozens of NHS workers who have died in the course of doing their jobs.

The tributes from their bosses, colleagues, friends and family ring with the same tone of warm admiration, grief, and love. “Melujean,  Ate MJ for her friends and colleagues, was a hardworking and kind-hearted person who spent 18 years of her life working for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. She was full of joy and always had a smile for everyone no matter how tired she was.”

“(Lourdes Campbell) was a well-liked and valued member of the team, known for working extremely hard. She was dedicated to patient care and her colleagues respected her quiet, diligent and compassionate approach.”

‘King Jr. had worked at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford for more than 10 years, always doing his job with great enthusiasm and joy”.’

“(Elbert Rico) was always working and would prioritise others needs’ firsts. He would walk around the hospital with a smile on his face and very rarely would he call in sick from work.”

Their stories tell how healthcare workers around the world are turning up for work knowing they are exposing themselves to the virus. Imagine what that takes.

It is an extraordinary courage that the world is belatedly recognising, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to point out that healthcare workers with Filipino heritage are at the frontlines of the global fight in a very specific way.

The official number of NHS staff who have died after contracting COVID-19 has risen to 27, the UK’s Health Secretary confirmed earlier in the week, but the latest report verified and collected by a group formed by nurses for nurses, Nursing Notes, says that the number is actually 60. That means that one in five of the dead are Filipino immigrants, a full 20 percent – that far outstrips the ratio of Filipinos working in the NHS (at least 18,500 of 1.2 million); it’s an even more staggering 40 percent of the official death toll. Filipino immigrants dominate the nursing sector in the English speaking world – the UK, USA and Canada. Thousands more are in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

They do so at enormous personal risk, more often than not isolated not just because of protocols to prevent infection but also because of the nature of being immigrants, caring for others irrespective of the country where they work and of their patients’ background. Their nationality does not dictate their kindness.

“I overcome any anxiety by just going to work and thinking this is the oath that I made: to take care of people. I’ve learnt to love this profession and going to work knowing you will be touching another person’s life. It’s an act of courage to face whatever the day brings,” a 29-year-old nurse from Quezon City, working in the intensive care unit of a major teaching hospital in London told me. He told me there is plenty of protective equipment at his hospital now, but other healthcare workers have had to treat patients without proper equipment.

“I called the ambulance and they came to the house but refused to admit her to the hospital,” the widow of a recently deceased Pinay nurse told a British newspaper. “They told her to take paracetamol. Her whole body was in pain. She couldn’t eat… I don’t know why the government did not do more to protect NHS workers, like my wife. She was neglected. My children’s lives will never be the same again.”

“Filipino health workers have served tirelessly and courageously at the frontlines of the war against this pandemic, and their contribution to the ongoing effort to save lives is nothing but immense,” a statement from Philippine Ambassador to the UK and Ireland Antonio Lagdameo said, in a tribute to the Filipino NHS workers who have died.

There is a lot that could be done to help migrant healthcare workers. When they first arrive in the country they have to pay £400 a year for access to healthcare themselves, according to Susan Cueva of the migrant rights group Kanlungan. “Many of the newly arrived nurses in the UK over the last two to three years are in crowded accommodation. I’ve seen them in houses where there are four bedrooms for 10 people because that’s all they can afford… they do a rota of sleeping in the beds. They’re also paying loans in the Philippines for the first few years they’re here.” (Kanlungan is connecting families in the Philippines with healthcare workers in the UK and providing food and shelter through a volunteer network for Filipinos affected by COVID-19.)

Healthcare workers themselves also want people to help them by social distancing: “Stay home so we can save people’s lives, and you can save people in healthcare, because right now the healthcare industry is at its worst situation, people are calling in sick, patients keep coming in and it’s exhausting all of the resources that the healthcare industry has,” said the ICU nurse. It’s a good way to honour the living and save lives.