After serving meals to Texas Children’s team members, our patients and their families for nearly a decade, Isha Habib received her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on January 28. Habib, a Sierra Leonean refugee, overcame a civil war to come to the United States and quickly found her way at Morrison Health care and Texas Children’s.
Several members of Habib’s family in the United Kingdom and the U.S. have died from complications due to COVID-19. She has since received her second COVID-19 vaccine dose and wants to do her part to end the pandemic.
The vaccine, Habib says, is a blessing.
“If this COVID shot went to Africa, everyone would go and get it, because we know people are losing their life. (In) America, we have all the opportunity. Even if I had to pay (for the vaccine), I would make a payment plan every day,” Habib said.
Only 0.2 percent of the population in Sierra Leone is fully vaccinated as of June 14, according to Our World in Data. That’s compared to 44 percent of Americans.
For 20 years, Habib has worked at several hospitals around Houston. Most notably, she’s worked at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women since it opened. In her time working with the Food and Nutrition Department, she has prepared meals for dialysis patients and served guests in the Fresh Bistro.
“Isha arrived with minimal skills in food service, but had tremendous work ethic, energy and a palpable sense of sincere appreciation for each opportunity,” said Allen Pemberton, her first director at Morrison. “It was not until I had the opportunity to sit and eat lunch with her one day, listening to her tale regarding her path to America, that I learned her overflowing gratitude for life was forged from the embers of violence and a narrowing escape from the militant forces that had destroyed so much of what was most precious in her childhood.”
Habib came to the United States a few months later than planned. Her original flight was scheduled for September 11, 2001 – the same day of the terrorist attacks in Washington, Manhattan and Shanksville, Penn. When she was finally able to come to the U.S. on October 26, 2001, she was sponsored by a Houston charity that helped her set up a new life here.
An avid cook at work and at home, Habib loves to make jollof rice, a tomato-and-rice dish popular in West Africa.
“I like doing what I’m doing right now,” Habib said of being stationed at Texas Children’s. “I like to help people.”
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