ANGELS OF MERCY

UNWAVERING IN THEIR COMMITMENT, AWAY FROM THEIR FAMILIES AND LIVES, AND SUPERHUMAN IN THEIR ENDEAVOURS, THESE MEDICS AT THE FRONTLINES OF COVID WOULD DO HIPPOCRATES PROUD

- SONALI ACHARJEE

They had met while studying for their postgraduation at the Maulana Azad Medical College, or MAMC, as it is better known. And got married only this January. Little did Dr. Ishan Rastogi and his wife Dr. Rashmi Mishra know then that four months into their married life, they would be thrown together in a crisis that would consume all their waking hours. Both senior residents of medicine at LNJP (Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash) Hospital, the 30-year-old doctor couple scarcely get a moment to themselves while posted in the hospital’s COVID ward. It is only small consolation that they get to see each other every day, play an occasional game of Ludo online, or exchange smiles through their PPE suits. There remains the nagging worry, that one of them might get infected, and the other would be left alone.

These days, a typical day at LNJP, the capital’s largest dedicated COVID facility, begins with senior and junior residents coming in for one of the following three shifts—two six-hour shifts of 9 am-3 pm and 3 pm-9 pm, or a 12-hour one from 9 pm-9 am. All shifts are changed daily. “Doctors enter from a sanitised ‘green zone’, where they put on the PPE [Personal Protection Equipment] kit, which takes half an hour. And then they enter the ‘red zone’, where the patients are,” says Dr. Sohini Halder, 29, a senior resident at the hospital.