With inputs from

Sreemol TC

in Kochi

Shikha Malhotra is used to putting on makeup, but since March 27, she’s been donning three face masks, three pairs of gloves, shoe covers and a blue safety gown to work at the Covid isolation ward at Hinduhridaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Care municipal hospital in Jogeshwari, Mumbai. Once the safety gear is on, she takes down notes from the sisters whose shift is ending and goes about distributing medicines to more than 50 patients housed in the isolation ward. But unlike the other sisters on duty, 25-year-old Malhotra is a nurse only by education. She’s a professional actor who is volunteering as a nurse.“The day PM Modi announced a 21-day lockdown, I realised that I need to put my nursing training to use,” says Malhotra, who headed to 3-4 hospitals with her nursing degree from Delhi’s Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College and finally got accepted as a volunteer at HBT. “The medical superintendent was puzzled why I was insisting on joining as a volunteer at a Covid hospital when even doctors were trying to avoid it but I told her I am a nursing officer and I want to serve,” says Malhotra, who has acted as the lead in film Kanchli and as supporting actor in SRK starrer Fan.As images of exhausted doctors and nurses do the rounds on our WhatsApp groups, there are individuals who are stepping up to help them out as medical volunteers. Some are MBBS students, others are retired doctors and some, like Malhotra, are working in other fields.In UP’s Hardoi district, 28-year-old Pallavi Singh accompanies her mother, a staff nurse, to the local government hospital. Once there, she does anything and everything to help the staff doctors and nurses. “I have helped with first-aid, in administering fever medicine. When migrant labourers started pouring in from the cities, there was a sudden rush at the hospital and shortage of masks. So, I pitched in by making masks for the labourers. At times, I have also made tea for doctors and nurses,” says Singh, who is pursuing B.Ed from Lucknow University and spends about 8 hours every day at the hospital. She started volunteering about a week after the lockdown started and plans to continue for as long as the cases keep coming in.Dr Abdul Azeez, a 69-year-old retired GP, has been working in Oman post-retirement. When he was about to leave Kochi to return to Oman, he got a call from the Indian Medical Association asking him if he would like to work as a telemedicine volunteer and he said yes.He says the telemedicine team gets calls from anxious people every five to 10 minutes. “People ask how many days they should spend in quarantine? Will their family contract the infection too? Is there any medicine available against the illness? Some have fear psychosis. We recommend such patients to the mental health team. Others who call in with flu-like symptoms, we give them proper advice on what steps they should take,” he says.Like Dr Azeez, Dr Rashid in Delhi is giving medical advice, unravelling cryptic symptoms and just reassuring people who call up that everything is going to be okay. He is volunteering with India Volunteer Network, an NGO. “By taking these calls, we are preventing people from going to hospitals and adding to the already overburdened hospital resources,” says Dr Rashid, a final year MBBS student in the city who got to know about the volunteering opportunity on social media.Even integrated medicine specialists are doing their bit to fight Covid-19. In Bhopal, Dr Darpan Gangil has volunteered as member of the National Service Scheme and is posted at a 60-bed isolation centre in the city. “This is a difficult time for everyone and I obviously wanted to help,” says Gangil, who also goes out to distribute immunity-boosting medicines as sanctioned by the ministry of Ayush. “I also do tele- and online consultation. I hope by being a medical volunteer I am being able to reduce the workload of doctors in some small way.”