The first New York EMT to contract HIV is remembered on the 20th anniversary of her death - after the city abandoned her and refused to give her full medical benefits
Emergency Medical Technician Tracy Allen Lee died at the age of 34 from AIDS she contracted while on duty
The city denied she contracted it while she was saving an AIDS patient who was bleeding out and initially didn't want to give her a city-funded funeral
She died  September 24, 1997 and will have a stone memorial at the East Harlem EMS station

Emergency Medical Technician Tracy Allen Lee will be memorialized on after dying from AIDS 20 years ago from contracting the virus while treating a patient in New York City. The city that accused Lee of lying, saying she became infected on her own time, will now honor her with a stone memorial at the East Harlem EMS station. Allen died at the age of 34 and was just 17 months into her career when she contracted the virus.

In 1994, she was called to treat an AIDS patient who was bleeding to death inside a small room on 34th Street. Allen caught her glove on a nail, but she kept trying to save the patient. She didn't notice the nail pierced through her skin and that his blood entered her wound until after she finished working. According to New York Daily News, she soon tested positive for HIV. But the city refused to designate her diagnosis as something she incurred while on-duty, which would have given her more benefits.

Photo © Daily Mail online

24 September 2017
DailyMail.com Reporter, New York City