Peace Corps agrees to pay $750,000 to family of dead volunteer

Published November 7, 2023 4:38 PM

By KEN KUSMER
Associated Press

A law firm says the Peace Corps has agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a 24-year-old volunteer from Illinois who died in 2018 in East Africa after the agency’s doctors misdiagnosed a case of malaria. Adam Dinnell, a partner at the Houston-based law firm of Schiffer Hicks Johnson PLLC, said Tuesday that Bernice Heiderman of Inverness, Illinois, died in January 2018 on the island nation of Comoros after texting her mother that the local Peace Corps doctor wasn’t taking seriously her complaints of dizziness, nausea, fever and fatigue. Dinnell says the doctor told her to drink water and take aspirin.

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