Telangana: Travelling miles, away from family, with an oath to care

HYDERABAD: From walking distances over 20 kilometres to raise awareness in tribal hamlets to working tirelessly in remote villages, leaving their families behind, nurses and health workers at the forefront of the battle against coronavirus pandemic are braving it all at great cost to themselves.
Putting in extra hours, many are still to be paid while some, upon returning home, choose to stay in quarantine to protect their own families from any infection they may have carried from the ward.Here are few examples of such brave workers...
Perumandla Kavitha, community health worker: She has a 13-year-old child and a husband recovering from paralysis alone at home. Posted at a centre in Station Ghanpur, she would travel to work from Hyderabad by train until services stopped due to the lockdown. She was at work and has been staying there, in a room given by the villagers. A shopkeeper has given her a gas stove to cook. “I am spending most of my time attending to patients. Some even come from other villages, many a times locals oppose this. I am encouraging them to treat others properly,” she says.
Thellam Tabitha, staff nurse at Banswada Area Hospital: Ever since the outbreak, there has been a huge inflow of patients. “I used to visit home once a week but now its just video calls. My son asks me when I will come home. It is difficult to see him cry but there is work to be done. I could not return even before the lockdown as the entire staff is needed to keep the situation under control,” she says.
Guttupalli Rajeshwari, an ANM nurse at Satyanarayanapuram primary health centre: Her regular job was to go around tribal villages to check on children, pregnant women and other patients. Now, she has been asked to teach villagers hand hygiene, social distancing while keeping an eye out for any suspect cases. The village in Bhadrachalam, on the border with Chhattisgarh, has many villages just a trek away from each other. She covers almost 20 kilometres every day.
“I go to villages to tell people about the need to maintain social distance. If they know anyone who has come from abroad, I tell them not to mix with them and report to a hospital if there are any symptoms,” she said.