New York, USA — Unable to secure a liver transplant to save her life in the United States, young woman Constable Donique Anderson came back home to die.

The loss of the promising Jamaican cop triggered heavy mourning among family, friends, the police force, the New York Consulate, and the Diaspora in general where it is felt that had better planning been undertaken, she might have made it.

Using Anderson’s passing as a teachable moment, leading members of the Diaspora are urging Jamaicans back home to understand that while it might sound good, sending patients to the US for organ transplants without serious planning ahead could have a tragic ending.

“It is critical that proper preparations are made by anyone wishing to seek treatment in the US for autoimmune hepatitis,” the liver condition from which Anderson died from, said Claudette Powell, a registered nurse who chairs the Global Jamaica Diaspora Health Sector for the north-east US.

“This is also true of other like illnesses. Evaluation and assessment to determine the medical condition of the person seeking such treatment, as well as the identification of a donor in advance are critical,” said Powell.

Powell was among a group of Jamaicans based in the US who rallied to the cause in May last year after the Jamaica Police Federation organised a trip to the Harlem Hospital in Manhattan, in an ill-fated bid to get a liver transplant for Anderson who was accompanied by her mother, Gem Donald. Unable to find a donor in time, Anderson returned home and died at the University Hospital of the West Indies on December 23, 2023.

She had won the hearts of members of the police force after graduating at the top of the class as the lone female in the 2019 batch of 196 constables from the Jamaica Police Academy. She served at the Four Paths and several other police stations in Clarendon, even as she battled her illness.

Powell said the federation meant well but the trip was “not properly thought out, nor was the complexity of such arrangements properly understood”.

Suggesting that Jamaicans look also to Cuba and India for less expensive organ services, Powell told the Jamaica Observer that “the entire Diaspora, especially those of us who had formed a close bond with Constable Anderson, is saddened over her death”.

Among those providing assistance for Anderson were Jamaica’s Consul General in New York Alsion Wilson; medical doctors Robert Clarke, Gary Rhule and Maurice Wright; Michelle Neil Tulloch, the Global Jamaica Diaspora representative for the US north-east, and Dr Rupert Francis, chairman of the Diaspora Crime Intervention and Prevention task force.