Illinois Department of Public Health head Dr. Ngozi Ezike on Sunday delivered an emotional Mother’s Day message for her church in west suburban LaGrange — detailing that more than 1,000 mothers have died from COVID-19 in Illinois.
The weekend marked the first time in eight weeks in which Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Ezike didn’t stand before the cameras for daily COVID-19 briefings. Instead, Ezike — a mother of four — spent her Sunday delivering a lengthy sermon for Hope Church via their Facebook page.
“This Mother’s Day is especially challenging. That’s putting it ever so mildly,” Ezike said. “No one will ever forget Mother’s Day 2020.”
“Many of us can’t visit and celebrate this day in person with our mothers in the traditional way. For some, a visit would be putting our loved mother, our beloved mother, at risk of contracting this virus that we’ve all become intimately aware of,” Ezike said. “Some of our mothers are in a nursing home, where visitation is now banned, again, for their safety. Maybe your mother is no longer with us on this side of Earth.”
The state has lost 3,406 people to COVID-19, including 1,553 in the nursing homes.
“And then there are over 1,000 mothers that we have lost in Illinois alone to this awful coronavirus in just the last two months,” Ezike said.
Ezike said her spirituality helped her cope with the loss of her father, who died in February in California just before the pandemic began its rapid spread. And the health director said she’s “running on fumes with little to no sleep” and is humbled and grateful to be leading the state’s response to the virus.
Ezike heads the state’s Department of Public Health after being the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center’s medical director during 15 years working for Cook County Health. An internist and pediatrician, she oversaw medical care at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center during the 2009 H1N1 flu virus pandemic.
“Who am I to even be here before you? A daughter of poor African immigrants, born in California, and now leading the state of Illinois through a pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t seen in 100 years,” Ezike said. “The impossible becomes possible when you see that God is in it. The fact that I’m involved in this pandemic with all my imperfections flaring and glaring is just because I am part of his perfect plan.”
