LINI PUTHUSSERY India’s ‘Hero’ Nurse Who Died Battling Nipah Virus
Idon’t think I will be able to see you again. Sorry. Please raise our children well.”
Lini Puthussery, a 28-yearold nurse, wrote this note to her husband as she was dying from the deadly Nipah virus on Monday in India’s southern state of Kerala. She has two sons, aged five and two.
Lini had been treating a family of three who had been diagnosed with the virus - she is believed to have spent the entire night caring for them.
She is reported to have started feeling feverish on Sunday.
When she realised that she was experiencing what could be symptoms of the infection, she admitted herself to hospital and asked to be quarantined, according to local media reports. Her husband, Sajish, works as an accountant in Bahrain and flew back when his brother called and told him Lini was in hospital. Lini’s husband told the BBC that she had also called him.
“She said, “I am sick and I am going to the hospital for treatment’,” Mr Parambath said. He arrived in Kozhikode early on Sunday but by then Lini was already in the intensive care unit.
“She was using an oxygen mask because her oxygen levels were low,” Mr Parambath said. “She could not speak but she took my hand in hers and held it.”
After she died the following morning, a relative gave him the note she had written. It has been widely shared on social media after Mr Parambath showed it to local journalists.