Readers of a Monrovia, Liberia-based magazine, TMZ Liberia, have come down hard on Decontee Sawyer, the wife of late Liberian-American, Patrick Sawyer, who brought the deadly Ebola virus to Nigeria.
The readers, who were reacting to an article Decontee wrote on why her husband travelled to Nigeria despite warning to go under observation for 21 days, described her as a moron, selfish woman and arrogant.
Decontee had in her article said though Sawyer did not discuss the reasons for his journey from Liberia to Lagos, Nigeria with her, she reasoned it was to find a cure for his Ebola ailment.
She said that the poor health facilities in Liberia accounted for this.
Her full article, reproduced below the reactions that will follow, practically put the blame for Sawyer’s trip on the government and the system in Liberia.
However, that trip has cost three Nigerians their lives, with 10 others not certain of living beyond the next few days.
There are also 198 others on the watch list who are likely to develop full blown Ebola Virus Disease.
Readers who responded to the article by Decontee, said she should not have defended her husband’s “stupidity” as it has put the lives of several Nigerians on the line and has damaged the relationship between Liberia and Nigeria.
A reader said President Goodluck Jonathan was right to have described Sawyer as a madman and that Decontee also falls into the same category as her husband.
A reader accused Sawyer of also causing the death of several health officials at one of the hospitals in Liberia, St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital
Below are the responses unedited:
Moses Mendin said: My deepest sympathy to Decontee and the Sawyer family for the loss of Patrick. However, I would advice that Decontee remains silent at this time when the memories of her late husband’s arrogance and denial that has resulted to the infections and deaths of several hospital workers at the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital in Liberia and the outright conveying of the Ebola virus to Nigeria is still fresh on the minds of several people. I do agree with Decontee that her husband has strong mistrust in the Liberian health care system, a system that perhaps nurtured both her and her husband as well as their parents. This is not the argument for I know little or nothing about their backgrounds and quite basic now to go researching. But truly it is because of this mistrust, denial, and arrogance that Patrick in the first place got infected by this virus and in the process infected several others. Decontee should go beyond mere talking and do thorough investigation about what transpired at the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital that got Bro. Patrick Nshamze, a Cameroonian national serving as hospital director infected thereby affecting other missionaries and several other health workers. She should also go beyond and investigate her late husband’s attitude displayed in Nigeria that President Goodluck Johnattan referred to him as a “one madman”. Let Decontee let sleeping dog lie and concentrate on her bereavement while the African nations strive to clean the mess he created. May his soul rest in peace. My question is did Patrick tell Decontee about his infection since according to her he avoided contacts with people while at the Roberts International Airport indicating that he knew his status? Didn’t Decontee know that the “untrusted health care system” of Liberia did advice her late husband to go under 21 days of observation and he acted against this advice?
Susannah Ketter said: No need to point fingers here. We all need to work together and improve the healthcare system rather than criticize it. We should be ashamed of ourselves that such a virus that could be contained with common isolation, gloves and proper universal precautions have claimed so much lives due to our lack of provisions/infrastructure. This is a wake up call!
Se ladi said: Wow so you are fine with his action of going to nigeria to seek better medical care. endangering the lives of other people on the plane and in lagos. he is a government official and have not done anything to improve the health system in liberia. furthermore he is an american citizen why didnt he go there since they have one of the best health care systems in the world. Pls my dear widow sorry for your loss and keep quiet. i hope the families of other innocent victims infected by your husband do not get to hear what you are saying. the fact is that your husband knew in was a walking disaster and in denial of his health state, his arrogance did not help the situation. I agree very much with what madam president and president Jonathan had to say about him.
Joshua Sagin said: I wanted to start my comment by saying that his soul rest in peace but madam you just got me angry.You think because you have access to the media you have the right to say whatever you like? Your late husband is truly ”arrogant,reckless” and a ”biological terrorist” according to the Liberian and Nigerian Presidents.Despite his level of education and professional profile,he arrogantly has directly or indirectly murdered about ten people and the number of casualties doesn’t end here.Which of these actions would have been better? For him to have die in the Liberian hospital with poor health care facility or to indirectly murder tens or hundred of people? How I which he had infected you and your kids.So you will understand the implication of your late husband’s reckless action.If you are wise enough,you should keep quiet and mourn your late husband. May his gentle soul rest in peace.
Saki Golafale said: Decontee, I am sorry for your loss and those of other innocent people who came in contact with the late Patrick in an attempt to help him. However, in these kinds of situations where Patrick’s case has gone international, I would have preferred you remain silent on the matter yet and nurse your wounds quietly. Many people are still dying and others are worried since they know of coming in contact with your late husband, so there was no need to say what you have said. I think your first comment should have been an apology to those who have innocently died as the result of your husband. It will be more peaceful for you and your family if only you talk (moderately) less and listen more.
Auto Mart said: THIS WOMAN IS A MORON….IMAGINE HER STUPID ARTICLE….YOU AND YOUR HUSBANDS ARE MURDERERS…AND YOU ARE HERE SPEWING BILE….MAY EBOLA INFECT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY…MAD WOMAN…
Earl Zeon said: In as much as both sides are grieving the loss of love ones or just being a wellwisher, I say, it is INHUMANE for a person to wish a deadly viral disease on a Woman and her Children. @ Joshua Sagin. That is unacceptable and over the line. With that being said, My deepest sympathy to the Sawyer family and all those who suffered and suffers the detriment this virus has caused. May God hear our Prayers and heal our lands.
Literary Legacy said: Mrs. Decontee Sawyer, I, as a Nigerian professional woman also living in the United States of America, Simply ask you to SHUT UP!. My pastor here has been a Liberian man, with a Sierra Leonian wife. As much as I love my African brothers and sisters, I can tell you right now that you are being selfish. You think your late husband’s life, is worth more than the many people he has killed by spreading the infection, and the many children who are left without parents, including those infected and quarantined people, hundreds of them, whose lives will never be the same again? You have the nerve to use your late husbands stupid death, which he asked for, to make yourself a celebrity? Are you looking for sympathy, or spreading the wickedness around? First of all, your husband Mr Patrick whatever (it makes me throw up to say his full name), had the opportunity to fly out of Liberia straight back to the United States of America, as an American Citizen. Who do you think had a better health care system to take care of him, Nigeria or America? He was a well educated man, so don’t tell me that somebody who was looking forward to seeing his daughter for her 4 year old birthday, and seeing you, would not want to fly back to the U.S.A once he knew he was sick. Is the U.S not the country with the trial Ebola drug? Your late husband was a very wicked man. You, madam, are a very wicked woman. You have never ONCE apologized to the Nigerian people, before defending your stupid husband. I have a mind to take you to court and sue you for all you are worth, although I don’t think it is much at all. You have made me HATE, whatever putrid stuff comes out of your mouth. If not for the other Liberians who died at St. Joseph Catholic Hospital, Liberia, and other Liberians who have apologized, I would have hated Liberians. All I can tell you is this, if I curse you, it will work. My bible says a curse without cause will not alight. This means a curse with cause will alight. I curse you, Mrs Patrick Sawyer, and your children, up until the fourth generations. You will never know peace in your lives. You will never achieve anything worthwhile in life that will last long. You will all be infected with strange diseases and die miserable and horrible deaths. The only alternative deaths for all of you is suicide. The blood of all the people whom your late husband and heritage with the legacy of wickedness, deception and death has infected, will rest upon your heads in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Until you repent of your late husband’s arrogance, you are all a bunch of murderers. Please, stay away from Nigerians. You are HATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Carmenresia Jones said: Firstly, let me offer my condolences to you Decontee for your loss. I know it’s a difficult time for your family and yourself, but with all due respect, I do believe that your idea, or account of this story is totally bias. Most times when we are in a situation where the impact is too close to home, we tend to loose focus of reality. The reality here is that Patrick, your late husband was irresponsible and arrogant. Being educated does not always give the ability to use common sense. Had your husband used his common senses, he would have avoided all the controversy surrounding his death. It’s not rocket science!! From your own accounts of what was reported, Patrick Sawyer (the late) knew he was sick. He also knew the extent of his disease and what any type of physical contact with another person would mean (your own words that he avoided any type of contact with others while at the airport). Why in the name of God did he not stay in Liberia? Or better yet, since the healthcare system is so messed up that he couldn’t trust the doctors to properly diagnosed him, why did he not make a private arrangement to be directly transported to the US where he could trust the American doctors? If going to Nigeria was his “safe haven” had he made any arrangements to be met with a doctor at the airport to treat him? Did he have a team of specialist that he was going to? How was he going to find the type of treatment or diagnosis that was accurate? How was risking the lives of others his “desperate plea for help”? And since you knew him “better than he knew himself” why did YOU not advice him of the proper thing to do? How can you justify his irresponsible act knowing fully well that he not only endangered the lives of those that came in contact with him at the airport, but also all those that were connected to them as well? He’s gone now- but his actions, in my opinion, will always remain unjustifiable and irresponsible. Mr. Sawyer knowingly and consciously put a lot of people and their families at risk. In my view, listening to you say what you are saying, is like listening to the family of an HIV Positive individual justify that person’s action of knowingly infecting others with the disease. A person who is HIV positive and knowingly infect others with the disease, is a murderer and there is nothing that the family can say that will change that fact! So stop justifying your husband’s actions in his last days. It does not speak well of you as a person. May God comfort you and your kids and family.
Botoe K. Zinnah, Jr. said: Madam Sawyer, my deepest sympathy to you and your family for your loss. Having said this, like many others have said, it is appropriate that you remain silent. You cannot imagine how the lives of people have changed because of your late husband’s action. People have died, and knowing that Liberia is a country that relies on almost everything from outside, major airlines have now stopped flights to Liberia, all emanating from the death of your late husband. While Ebola has no cure, the survival rate from this outbreak is much higher. If your husband had hearkened to the advise of the authorities and avoid travelling to Nigeria, he possibly could be alive today and the lives lost in Nigeria and at Catholic Hospital may not have happened. Moreover, the embarrassment that we now faced in getting flights to and from the country which is affecting the country would not have occurred. What is necessary now is to spread the message of hope, identify with bereaved families and give the rest to God in prayers. May God bless us all as we remember to give HIM thanks in everything.
Omotayo Smith said…
It appears you are equally as arrogant and in denial as your husband. Please keep quite and do not bring down the sin of your husband on yourself and your children.
Benedict Sayeh said: Please close your trap. You are as arrogant as your husband. If he knew so much about health management, he should have known that Ebola has no cure. In his weak mind he thought he could go to Nigeria and live? Did he know something that we did not know, was his sister misdiagnose?
When she was told that she had the virus then a pregnancy gone
wrong? A very ignorant man indeed.
Below is the full article of Decontee Sawyer on Patrick Sawyer’s trip to Nigeria:
Good day my Facebook friends and FAM. I hope all is well with you. Thank you for all of your kind words and support for me and my family. You strengthen me more than you realize. According to an article written on Ava’s birthday (August 10) by Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times, “…in another Liberian newspaper, The New Dawn, which cited footage from a security camera in the airport in Monrovia, Mr. Sawyer behaved strangely as he waited for his flight out of Liberia. He sat alone, avoiding physical contact with people, including an immigration agent who tried to shake his hand, and even lay flat on his stomach on the floor of a corridor of the airport, the paper reported.”
I’ve read other reports in other papers (not the New York Times) about Patrick’s “recklessness.” I get where they’re coming from, and they certainly have the right to feel the way they do. However, as Patrick’s widow, I would like to shed some light on this from another perspective. One that only I, his wife, would know. It is in that light, that I am sharing a message I wrote a reporter contact of mine (at 6:37am on August 10th) from ABC News.
It reads:
Hey Catherine, sorry for contacting you and Josh so early. Just because I can’t sleep, doesn’t mean that others are awake as well. Lol. I’m contacting you because there are some reports in some of our local (U.S.) papers about Patrick’s “bad judgment,” in going to Nigeria. Some have gone as far as calling him a terrorist… he is no terrorist, and his act was far from malicious. It was actually a cry for help.
I knew Patrick better than anybody else (including himself). He had told me many times in the past how much he didn’t trust the Liberian healthcare system. He would tell me about how a person would get checked in for one thing, and get misdiagnosed and get the wrong treatment as a result. On top of that, Patrick was a clean freak, and told me how filthy a lot of the hospitals were.
He didn’t tell me this, but I know in my heart of hearts that Patrick was determined to get to Nigeria by all means because he felt that Nigeria would be a place of refuge. He has expressed to me many times in the past that he felt passionately about helping to be a part of strengthening Liberia’s healthcare system, but he knew it wasn’t there yet, and he wouldn’t want to take a chance with his life because a lot of people depended on him… Patrick had a passion for life, and he wouldn’t have wanted his to end. So, I bet anything that he was thinking, if I could only get to Nigeria, a way more developed country than Liberia, I would be able to get some help. How ironic.
It has been reported that Patrick avoided physical contact with everyone he came across during his trip from Liberia to Nigeria. When he got to Nigeria, he turned himself in letting them know that he had just flown in from Liberia. Patrick went to Nigeria for help so that he can get properly diagnosed, and not misdiagnosed in Liberia. And if it came back that he did have Ebola, he trusted the Nigerian healthcare system a lot more than he trusted the Liberian’s. His action, as off as it was, was a desperate plea for help. Patrick didn’t want to die, and he thought his life would be saved in Nigeria.
I write today, not simply because of Patrick, but because of the broken healthcare system in the Liberia, and the government’s inability under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (and other past Presidents) to fix it. Good doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers aren’t given the support they need to save lives.
President Sirleaf went on CNN News throwing stones at Patrick, a man who can no longer defend himself, a man who worked tirelessly for Liberia. She should be ashamed of herself. I use to admire this woman, and was excited and proud of her accomplishment as the first woman President in the entire continent of Africa. She will always own that. We will always own that. It can’t be taken away from her. It’s something to be proud of. But this woman has failed her country.
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