The current situation across the globe due to COVID-19 pandemic reminds firebrand writer Taslima Nasreen of her days as a doctor treating patients during the cholera outbreak in Bangladesh in the early 90s.
"I was practising at that time and did not use gloves and masks while giving saline doses to hundreds of patients everyday as I found it uncomfortable wearing them. Fortunately I didn't get any infection. However, this COVID-19 is very contagious and it's a pandemic. All precautions are a must," says the Bangladeshi-Swedish writer of "Lajja" fame who has been living in exile since 1994.
"The current situation reminds me of the time when I too worked to save people from cholera epidemic in the early 90s. I worked in an infectious disease hospital in Mymensingh where thousands of patients used to come every day and I treated them," she told PTI in an interview.
The cholera epidemic in Bangladesh in 1991 affected around 2,25,000 people and claimed over 8,000 lives.
"I feel very proud of the medical fraternity across the world working tirelessly. They are risking their lives to save humanity. Some of my acquaintances also died in New York fighting coronavirus," Nasreen says. She studied medicine at Mymensingh Medical College and graduated in 1984. Daughter of a physician father, she worked at Dhaka Medical College hospital but had to quit due to her feminist writing.