90-Year-Old Hero in Belgium Dies After Giving Up Her Ventilator for a Younger Patient

90-year-old Suzanne Hoyalerts, originally from the Belgian village Binkom, has passed away from coronavirus after giving up her ventilator. She assured she did not want to use it if it could be used to save another life.

SUZANNE was accompanied to the hospital by her daughter Judith when she began to feel like she was gasping for air and had lost her appetite. The woman was hospitalised and had tested positive for coronavirus. Shortly after, they had to isolate her and hence separate her from her daughter.

According to FoxNewx, this was the moment when the woman asked the medical staff to not give her an artificial respirator. “I do not want to use an artificial respirator. Save it for the younger parents. I have already had a good life”, assured the elderly woman.

Unfortunately, Suzanne passed away on March 22 due to a lack of oxygen only two days after being hospitalised.

Her daughter Judith assures that her mother was previously hospitalised last year for pneumonia and that although she lived alone, she had taken the quarantine measures “very seriously.”

Devastated by her loss, Judith recalls that her mother said to her before being separated, “You shouldn’t cry, you did everything you could,” she also laments that she couldn’t be there to say goodbye and that she “Didn’t even have the opportunity to go to her funeral.”

The current situation being lived out in Belgium is similar to the one lived out by the rest of the word under the pandemic. Hospitals are oversaturated with people who need respirators, which is now the most in demand pieces of medical equipment worldwide.

Many people have taken to social media to honour Suzanne and the heroic gesture of giving up her own ventilator to save the life of someone younger.