Nurses ‘just used and then dumped’

THE grieving husband of nurse Elsie Sazuze has blasted the Government for a lack of regard for care workers.

Kenneth Sazuze, 45, said: “The Government doesn’t care about nurses. They use them and they dump them.

“If we can’t look after our nurses right now, when are we going to look after them? When they have all gone?”

Kenneth’s wife Elsie, 44, died of Covid-19 last month. She had complained of a lack of protective gear at the care home where she worked.

Kenneth, a student nurse, said: “Why can’t we make our own PPE with everything we have in the United Kingdom? Every nurse complains, but nobody cares.”

Elsie, mum to Andrew, 22, and Anna, 16, was not allowed visitors in her final hours at Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield.

She made an emotional call to Kenneth before she was put on a ventilator. He said: “She started telling me, ‘Ken, if I don’t come back, I love you, be strong for the kids’.

“I was like, ‘No, no, no don’t tell me that. We will be alright’. She said, ‘I’m just telling you in case’.”

Kenneth also criticised the Government for being slow to introduce lockdown measures – as he believes Elsie could have been infected in the week before the shutdown.

He said: “I strongly believe that if the Government had acted more quickly we wouldn’t have lost so many lives, and my wife could be here today.”

She told me, ‘If I don’t come back, I love you… be strong for the kids’ KENNETH SAZUZE ON FINAL CALL FROM ELSIE