THE FRONTLINE WARRIOR
Tags: Coronavirus, Covid 19, Heroes, Workers, Doctors

Essential workers are the heroes of the year, but it is not enough to put them on a pedestal

As Covid-19 lashes the world, frontline workers risked their own lives to save others. Community workers, hospital assistants, nurses, and doctors tended to the sick. Amid the fears of infection, sanitation workers continued to work. In graveyards and cremation grounds, workers performed death duties. Even as many of us were locked in at home, countless others kept going. These essential workers are, without a doubt, those who most deserve our celebration and gratitude. consider the scale of their challenge. Covid has ripped through the country, India is the second worst-hit nation in the world. Meanwhile, our expenditure on public healthcare is among the lowest in the world. Before the pandemic hit, there were barely 60 hospital beds per lakh of the population, 38 beds per lakh in a state like Uttar Pradesh. Beds can be added ina crisis, but it is not easy to expand personnel. The WHO recommends at least one doctor per thousand people; India had one allopathic government doctor for over 10,000 people and a deficit of over 20 lakh nurses.

This fragile system has been battered for many months now. Our hospitals have seen daily trauma at a dramatic new scale. Family attendants, whom the system usually relies on, are also absent in this pandemic, placing the entire burden of care on hospital staff. Health workers have separated from their own families, as they work grueling hours, following exhaustive protocols encased in their PPE suits and masks. There is little time for sentimentality in the middle of this onslaught.

And yet, there have been many heartrending stories of kindness too, of people going out of their to care for others. Nurses have expressed pride in being able to serve — Kerala’s Reshma Mohandas vowed to get right back to work in a week after she contracted covid working for elderly patients, and she did. Dr. Zahid Abdul Majeed at AIIMS had to remove his PPE and risk his life to re-intubate a patient, but he did. Tulu Basfor, a volunteer sanitation worker stepped into work when others left in fear.

In rural areas, healthcare facilities, doctors, and nurses are in even shorter supply. Here, it is Asha Workers who saved the day. This corps of female community health workers was set up in 2005 to reduce maternal and infant mortality, expand immunization, and so on. They work long hours with a meager honorarium. With Covid this year, their workload blew up, even as their incentives dried up — it was suddenly their job to spread disease information, track covid, monitor the quarantine of returning migrants, and more.

In the early days of the pandemic, many health workers were compelled to work without enough protective gear. Doctors worked in raincoats and helmets, Asha workers wrapped shawls around their faces. A few were even attacked or denied access to their own homes in those panicky weeks. Of course, these unfortunate incidents do not take away from the genuine gratitude that most Indians feel for these frontline workers.

When the prime minister asked us to demonstrate our thanks by switching off our lights, banging plates, and so on, many of us enthusiastically participated. The air force showered petals on hospitals, flying from the four corners of the country. In many cities around the world too, citizens clapped in the chorus for essential workers, and businesses offered them discounts and free meals. Several countries have offered some form of extra recompense, called hero pay, hazard pay, thank you pay, and so on. In India, the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana extended insurance cover-related work, in case they die while doing it. Some states have offered financial aid if they fall sick, and hiked incentives for Asha workers for this period.

But our praise for their courage and selflessness can be a way of placing superhuman expectations on them. For all their heroic effort, they are also doing their jobs because they have to. Their service calls for more than lip service on our part.

These frontline workers deserve our whole-hearted appreciation, but they also deserve their due. Precarious contractual work, low incomes, and predictable hours are a lot of those whose work is most essential. There is a social dimension to this situation — the traditional undervaluing of women’s work is the reason that Asha workers have not got the regard and remuneration they deserve. Asha workers have gone on strike earlier, as had some nurses. It is also a fact that the hardest work in this pandemic, cleaning hospitals, picking up waste, performing cremations, and so on, has fallen on people from subordinated castes.

A virus devastates the body when the immune system is weak. That applies to societies too; these frontline workers are the defenders of our well-being. Seen through the 2020 vision of this pandemic, our priorities should be crystal clear: shoring up the public health system, and paying community social workers a just wage is crucial, for our sakes.