These past two weeks we heard about the death of at least 11 doctors who had succumbed to COVID-19. While some have recovered, countless others are ill—either aware that they have contracted the virus, or still waiting for their test results. Alas, we must prepare to hear of more such deaths in the coming days.
The doctors became infected while carrying out their sworn duty.
These days hospitals are battlefronts, even as many of them have released notices that they are down to their bare capacities and could no longer accommodate patients exhibiting COVID symptoms. The number of confirmed cases has surged and even the most sophisticated hospitals find themselves no match to the virus. Imagine what conditions other hospitals have to put up with.
Despite these conditions, doctors and other health care workers—if they are fortunate enough not to have to go on quarantine, or not to feel sick, themselves—show up, anyway. They are exhausted, afraid and overwhelmed, and yet they don their coats and see their patients, fully aware of the risks they face, not only for themselves but for the families they go home to.
Doctors enjoy high esteem in society because of the hard work they put in, and continue to put in, studying medicine, and because of the nobility of what they do—save lives. A doctor in the family is always a source of pride and comfort. They prepared long and hard for the job they do every day, and a fallen physician is truly a loss, as an individual and as an agent of good in society.
Woe to those who dare believe they are above all rules and who imperil the lives of others—including the doctors and other health workers who take them in in all good faith—with their deceit and arrogance.
We grieve with the families and the nation for the fallen doctors. We lost good people—too many of them—in the span of only a few days. May those remaining carry on despite the odds, in the hope of seeing us through to better days.