Immigrant still hospitalized in Iowa, 18 months after crash

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — An African man who was trying to build a new life in Cedar Rapids has spent the past 18 months at an Iowa City hospital, recovering from a traffic accident that killed two fellow immigrants.

Jean-Claude Shako suffered head and other injuries in the June 25, 2018, collision while he and four other immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo were headed to work at a meatpacking plant in Tama. The collision with a construction vehicle also injured both drivers and a fifth person in the car carrying Shako, according to The Gazette.

Shako's severe brain trauma has impaired his mobility, speech and memory. He's well enough to be discharged from the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, doctors have said, but he has no family to move in with, no money for a rehabilitation center and isn't yet eligible for assistance through Medicaid.

“I’m getting stronger,” Shako said told the newspaper through an interpreter last week. “If my family would take me, I would go. But I don’t have family here.”

He has been granted permanent U.S. residency. He carries in his wallet pictures of his wife and five children, who remain in Congo.

Hospital officials cite privacy rules in declining to answer questions about Shako and about why the hospital hadn’t subsidized a move to a lower-cost skilled nursing facility. In fiscal 2018, the hospital provided free care for 14,548 patients and absorbing costs of $14.2 million, according to Iowa Hospital Association figures.

Shako's friend and co-legal guardian Peter Nkumu, of Iowa City, has been scrambling to find help for him, including asking lawmakers to consider waiving a wait rule for legal immigrants wanting access to Medicaid.

State Sen. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an Ottumwa Republican, said she plans to inquire about Shako's case and said lawmakers might be willing — in extreme circumstances — to consider exceptions to the five-year wait rule.

But Miller-Meeks also said she wants to make sure other avenues and options are considered, such as stringent insurance requirements for legal immigrants.

Nkumu and other immigrants have explored trying to bring someone from Congo to support Shako, but visas are tough to come by. Shako received one of 2,664 permanent visas issued to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2017, according to the U.S. State Department.

They fear sending Shako back to Congo, saying the poor conditions there could be prove fatal to him.

Geoffrey Lauer, executive director of the Iowa Brain Injury Alliance based in Iowa City, said getting Shako out of the hospital and into a more appropriate setting not only would save state resources, it could accelerate his rehabilitation.

And, Lauer said, Shako now is an Iowan, making him “part of our mission.”