Veteran child care worker, Shirley Ferguson succumbed suddenly on Tuesday at a hospital in London, England where she was receiving medical attention.
Ferguson, 76, of Republic Park, East Bank Demerara had joined the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security in 1998 after remigrating from England where she lived since the early 1960s. At the Ministry she embraced the task to protect children. A press release from the Ministry yesterday said that she was a dedicated woman who reached out to every child in events she was involved in.
While the Ministry described her as an individual who possessed a “distinctive personality”, her husband, Jonas Ferguson said that she was his best friend and his ‘cricket girl’. “She loved the West Indies”, he said. Ferguson said that Shirley was a lively individual who embraced the world to protect children. He said that she had two children, one of whom she had fostered and treated as her own. “I lived with her for fifty years…and she was my best friend. She loved singing…reading and going to church.”
He said that when he had spoken to her, via telephone last Sunday she had told him to “keep a cool head,’ and not to worry. He said that he was saddened by her death because he had spent his entire life with her but all he can do now is ‘keep a cool head,’ and not stress. He said that he had known “Fergie or Shirls”, as she was fondly called, all his life and their love began when they were children and the only thing that separated them then was a fence. “She was my neighbour. I knew her since then”, he recalled.
He said that on January 15 she became sick at their Republic Park home. When they visited a private city hospital the doctors diagnosed her as having food poisoning. Medications were prescribed and up to two days after taking them her condition had worsened. The decision was then taken to have her travel to London as she felt better medical care would be given by doctors there. “She left and went to London and was being treated but she just kept getting worse and worse.”
An autopsy will be performed on Ferguson sometime today.
