One Peace Corps Death but NOT from the Coronavirus Pandemic
Julie and Bill Heiderman with a portrait of their daughter, Bernice, who died in 2018.(Credit…Joshua Lott for The New York Times) For the first time in its history, the Peace Corps suspended all operations as the coronavirus raced around the globe. Now it is preparing to send volunteers back into the field. But the planning for the redeployment of Americans around a world shaken by the pandemic comes as the agency faces renewed questions about the quality of its medical care, touched off in part by the death of a 24-year-old volunteer from undiagnosed malaria. The volunteer, Bernice Heiderman, died alone in a hotel room in Comoros, off Africa’s east coast, in 2018, after sending desperate text messages to her family. She told them that her Peace Corps doctor was not taking her complaints seriously. An investigation by the agency’s inspector general documented a string of problems. Ms. Heiderman’s . . .
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She still should have been tested for malaria, even under the assumption that she was taking her pills. We know…