Personalities across Europe come out of retirement to offer their medical expertise

This article is more than 5 months old

This article is more than 5 months old

An Irish prime minister, a French film director and a Hungarian MEP are among the public figures who are resurrecting their medical careers to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

They are part of a small, growing group of people in politics, the arts and sports who are becoming doctors again to help health care systems under unprecedented strain.

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s taoiseach, has offered to work one day a week as a doctor as his country braces for a surge in the number of infections, it emerged this week. “Many of his family and friends are working in the health service. He wanted to help out even in a small way,” said a spokesperson.

Varadkar, 41, worked as a junior doctor in Dublin and qualified as a GP in 2010 before quitting medicine to become a full-time politician, and later becoming premier.

His return to medicine adds him to an eclectic group of public figures who have dusted off credentials to work as nurses and doctors in Europe’s battle against the pandemic.

Coronavirus has made thousands of frontline health care workers ill and left many others unable to work because they need to stay at home to care for children or self-isolate because of potential infection. Health services across the continent have appealed to trainees, retirees and expatriates – anyone with useful skills – to help fill the gap.

For Thomas Lilti, 43, a film director and showrunner, was filming the French medical TV drama Hippocrate in a hospital when the pandemic struck. He suspended filming and a few days later started working as a doctor – a profession he had quit in 2014 – in the same hospital.

“I volunteered in casualty to try and help in a small way so the more competent doctors, those who really know what they are doing, can have a rest even if just for a few hours,” he told Le Journal du Dimanche.

French sports figures have also reverted to former professions. Stéphanie dos Santos, 28, a basketballer, and Julien Mathieu, a ju-jitsu champion, are working as nurses. Thomas Carabas, 31, a rugby referee, has returned to work at Bayonne hospital.

Politicians across Europe – and the political spectrum – have also responded.

Katalin Cseh, 31, an MEP for Hungary’s opposition Momentum party, has returned from Brussels to Budapest and is to start her first shift as a volunteer medic on Tuesday.

Cseh expressed concern about Hungary’s low level of testing and potential abuse of a new law against misinformation but volunteered “to show a good example”, she said. She will work part-time and unpaid while continuing to serve as an MEP.

In France, Thomas Mesnier, 34, an MP for the governing La République en Marche, has returned to hospital work. Caroline Fiat, 43, an MP for La France Insoumise, has returned to work as a nurse. Bernard Jomier, 56, a Socialist party senator, and Véronique Guillotin, 57, a Radical Movement senator, have returned to the medical profession as doctors.

In Northern Ireland, Kathryn Owen, 42, a Democratic Unionist party (DUP) councillor, is to resume working as a nurse this week at a hospital site that treats coronavirus patients. John Kyle, 68, a Progressive Unionist party (PUP) councillor, has come out of retirement as a GP despite being close to an at-risk age group.

“Fear and powerlessness reinforce each other and I thought that taking action to join the army of healthcare workers combating the virus would help me handle those feelings,” Kyle said via email. “My medical instincts of wanting to help the ill and suffering were also reactivated and so volunteering seemed a natural response.”

His family is supportive but worries given his age, he said. “I think it is the right thing to do … But fears can raise their ugly head in the middle of the night.”

Varadkar rejoined Ireland’s medical register last month and has offered to help in areas within his competence, said a spokesperson for the taoiseach’s office.

Brendan O’Shea, a doctor who trained Varadkar as a medical student, remembers him as competent and effective in his hospital jobs, training practices and GP co-operative work. “He got on very well with patients and colleagues, and was regarded as a good team player.”

Varadkar, said O’Shea, once remarked that as a doctor people believed everything you said, but as a politician nobody believed a word.