A transatlantic bureaucratic holdup has delayed Social Security survivor benefits for a Coon Rapids woman who lost her husband to Ebola.
Decontee Sawyer's husband, Patrick, a Liberian government official, died during a July trip to Nigeria. Since then, Sawyer, a mother of three, has found herself in a bizarre situation: Her husband's death was all over the media on two continents, but she does not have his cremated remains or the death certificate she needs to collect benefits.
Sawyer says Nigerian officials have been slow in providing the document because they have blamed her late husband for bringing Ebola to Nigeria, where the virus was declared contained this week.
The office of U.S. Sen. Al Franken has reached out to Social Security officials and appealed to the State Department to intervene on Sawyer's behalf. After a three-hour meeting with Social Security staff Friday, Sawyer said they are looking into granting a death certificate waiver.
"I feel a lot more hopeful we are near the end of this battle," Sawyer said.
In 2008, Sawyer's husband returned to Liberia to help with the country's reconstruction after its civil war, shuttling between West Africa and Minnesota. A U.S. citizen, he got sick this summer and died while leading a Liberian finance ministry delegation to Lagos.
In the aftermath, Nigerian government officials and social media users alike angrily blamed him for a spate of fatal infections, including the deaths of the doctor and a pregnant nurse who cared for him. Decontee Sawyer has since become convinced the delay in receiving his remains and death certificate is a "vendetta."
"I get the anger and the resentment," she said. "But my three daughters didn't do anything wrong. And they are the ones you are punishing." Her girls are ages 6, 5 and 19 months.
In the days after her husband's death, Sawyer was in touch with her husband's superiors in the Liberian finance ministry, who assured her they would assist her. But Sawyer, who has been a vocal critic of Liberia's response to the Ebola crisis, lost touch with them more recently. Meanwhile, she found herself increasingly squeezed financially. Sawyer works part time at a St. Cloud center for sexual assault survivors.
'It's taken a lot longer'
Sawyer contacted Franken's office in August. Spokesman Marc Kimball says staff there have been in contact with the State Department repeatedly, urging officials to intervene on Sawyer's behalf. Earlier this week, the U.S. Consulate in Nigeria sent the country's health ministry a diplomatic note requesting that Sawyer's case get high priority.
"We hope this will be sufficient to resolve the issue," Kimball said, adding, "It's taken a lot longer than we had hoped."
More recently, Sen. Amy Klobuchar's office has taken on Sawyer's case, as well; Sawyer said they have offered to help her with accessing benefits her husband earned through his finance ministry job.
Forum planned Saturday
The Ebola crisis in West Africa has shaken the Twin Cities' sizable Liberian community, whose members have lost loved ones to the infection back home. Anxiety has run especially high since a Liberian man in Dallas became the first to be diagnosed with the disease in the United States in September.
Liberian community leaders and officials from the state Department of Health are hosting the latest in a series of public forums on Ebola from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Hennepin County Community College.
Mila Koumpilova • 612-673-4781
