Care for caregivers

Nurses put the care in health care, tending to patients round the clock. But they are paid a pittance and their work is barely acknowledged

- MINI P. THOMAS

Nurse Anju Rawat, 41, went above and beyond the call of duty during the pandemic. Even her pregnancy did not stop her from caring for Covid-19 patients at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. She was five months pregnant when she tested positive this May. She, too, now is a patient at AIIMS.

Rawat’s infection was acute and she was put on ventilator support. “The baby was born prematurely and died. The doctor said it was a boy,” says Rawat’s husband Lekh Raj Singh, a software developer with a mobile company in Noida.

Rawat suffered a cardiac arrest on the 14th day of hospitalisation, two days after she was taken off ventilator support. She also suffered hypoxic brain injury (lack of oxygen supply to brain). “Doctors are giving a poor prognosis,” says Singh.

Every Indian nurse has a story to tell—a story of struggle, hardships and commitment. They are the backbone of our health care system and yet they are paid a pittance. A visit to a Covid ward makes one wonder what keeps these nurses going in the face of deaths and the fear of contracting the virus.

Perhaps, Vibin Chandy has an answer. “If dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly,” he quotes from the Langston Hughes poem Dreams. Chandy, 35, is a nursing officer at the Government Medical College, Kottayam, Kerala.

His world turned upside down in 2018, while he was heading home from work. “That day, I was delayed, as I had to attend to a patient whose condition was critical,” recalls Chandy, who worked in the major operation theatre (MOT) then. He pauses and apologises for talking a lot. His social skills, however, have helped him build a quick rapport with patients.