Filming from her hospital bed at Charles-LeMoyne Hospital in Longueuil, Mireille Ndjomouo breathed heavily between each phrase as she pleaded for help on March 7.
The 44-year-old woman from Cameroon — established in Montreal for the last four years, according to the Journal de Montréal — died two days later. Her call for help resembled that of Joyce Echaquan, an Indigenous woman who exposed nurses’ slurs on Facebook before dying in a Quebec hospital.
Now, Ndjomouo’s family and friends are seeking justice, starting with a protest against the hospital on March 13.
Who is Mireille Ndjomouo?
A GoFundMe campaign organized by Ndjomouo’s sister, Christine Ndjomouo, says Ndjomouo was a single mother of three children.
In the video she filmed while in-hospital, Ndjomouo said she went to Charles-LeMoyne earlier that week for leg pain.
Ndjomouo described her alleged mistreatment by hospital staff.
What did her video show?
In the video she filmed in-hospital, Ndjomouo said she was given penicillin despite telling hospital staff she was allergic.
Ndjomouo said the penicillin injections persisted for three days, amid her objections, until a “nice nurse” realized her situation and said it wasn’t right.
“I have pimples all over me,” she says, breathing heavily.
“My mouth is paralyzed, my face is also swollen […] I’m not really the person you see on this video […] I am slowly dying in this hospital.”
Ndjomouo said she asked her doctor to move her to another hospital “where [she’d] be better looked after, but he [didn’t] want to.”
She also alleged that her sister, who is a nurse, was kicked out of her room twice.
“They want to kill me,” she says in the video.
According to the Journal de Montréal, after hours of negotiations and pressure from members of her community, Ndjomouo was transferred to Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, where she was diagnosed with lymphoma.
She died on Tuesday.
What’s happening now?
Ndjomouo’s supporters have created a Facebook page about her story and organized a protest in front of Charles-LeMoyne hospital on March 13 at 3 p.m.
A post says the family is hopeful that the coroner’s investigation into Ndjomouo’s death, which according to Global News is underway, will help them understand what happened.
“We have so many questions and we demand answers,” the post says.
“We want the truth. We want justice to honour Mireille’s memory.”
We reached out to Ndjomouo’s sister for comment, but were told she was busy organizing the protest.
“Let’s break the silence to break the mistreatment, racism and medical abuse suffered by the Black community,” the event page says.
The protest is live on Facebook until 5 p.m
