2020 turned man into superman. Helming the frontline were our inspirational doctors and healthcare workers
It is said that Marvel Comics was working on creating a new superhero team called New Warriors when COVID-19 hit the world and ended the Hollywoodian magic spinner’s dream. But without the pandemic, would man have discovered that superman was within him? Or that no martial valour could make up for the healer’s miracle that just about saved the human race from giving up hope? For fighting the Coronavirus, which has mutated with Frankensteinish zest, was no less than war. And the doctors, nurses and healthcare workers who gave back countless lives, weren’t ever trained for a global war of this nature. These dedicated and selfless professionals were undoubtedly the new warriors this year, ceaselessly fighting a still unknown enemy, dying at the frontline and getting back up, living to fight another day. Yet their story was never as lionised as that of legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan contracting and recovering from COVID-19. We still not do full justice to the doctors, rarely talking about the long hours they continue to put in to revive the sick or forget that while we rebel against COVID fatigue, they cannot even afford to slip up for even a moment as the virus recoups and attacks in waves. The doctors have no time to regroup; they carry on with extreme grace under pressure and with depleting numbers as many of their own fall along the way. And with a healthcare system that infrastructurally offers little backup, the doctors have only showed rare courage under fire. Their stories are an embodiment of humanism in cynical times. Some of them have worked non-stop for weeks on end, some have never seen family for months while others have not stopped reporting for critical care despite having co-morbidities themselves. Doctor-nurse parents have still not hugged their children almost a year after the pandemic as they have not been let off their rotational COVID rosters. Worse, overstressed and overworked, most continue to work at almost 50 per cent pay cuts as a lull in admissions has forced big hospitals to cut costs. And in a gross travesty of justice, healthcare professionals, who died in the line of duty, have left behind kin who are running from pillar to post to get the compensation promised to them under the Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan package. The wife of a Chandigarh-based doctor, who succumbed to the deadly disease, committed suicide as she was driven to penury and no relief came to her even six months after the compensation was promised to her. And how did the society repay its debt? By shunning doctors in their neighbourhoods as potential carriers of infection, denying rentals and looking at them with suspicion. Yet for all the doctors’ discontent and agitations that the media reports, there is their reassuring companionship and commitment that every COVID survivor acknowledges. Sadly, only the affected could see them for what they were. It is, therefore, disconcerting that nobody bothered to champion the concerns of our distressed healthcare givers, who should be our national heroes. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has been crusading that all doctors who had died, almost 400 at last count, should be given martyrs’ status. But the Government appeared insensitive when Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey told Parliament that no data about dead healthcare workers was maintained at the Central level as health is a State subject. Are we as a nation abdicating our conscience? For, if the IMA is to be believed, no nation has lost as many doctors and healthcare workers as India. It has even quantified their threat levels, saying: “Doctors suffer four times the mortality of ordinary citizens and private practitioners suffer eight times the mortality on the same scale. To feign that this information doesn’t merit the attention of the nation is abominable.”
But they have been an inspiration to ordinary Indians. Consider the funeral service workers who ensured the dignity of the dead and gave solace to families who were robbed of their last farewell. Remember the essential service providers who made the pain of the lockdown bearable, rushing supplies in the middle of curfews and sealed borders. Spare a thought for the bankers who enabled seamless processes and online transactions. Or those who spearheaded the digital revolution and created a parallel universe for us to retain our sanity and the human connect, if not touch. And a word for the policeman, who apart from wielding lathis to manifest the extra powers he had been invested with during the crisis, did turn into the neighbourhood friend . S/he would check on old people, ensure deliveries to the recipients in containment zones and generally see to it that all were secure and safe. Perhaps these people inspired common Indians to turn into Samaritans themselves. There are countless stories of groups helping returnee migrants with food and supplies, community endeavours of feeding the sick and the quarantined and, most significantly, individuals sharing their resources despite little earnings and joblessness. Interestingly, people watched the original TV adaptation of Ramayana with great passion through the lockdown when even Bollywood failed to think of new diversions. In retrospect, could people have been affected by the Hanuman syndrome, the character underrated most of the time under the luminescent glow of divinity but crossing all limits to deliver what is needed, without being asked? The word Hanuman means killing the “maan” or ego. In times that tested us, a few of us rose to the occasion. And became Corona warriors!