Dealing with COVID-19, the heartbreaks, pain
the medical field, but we have to be here for our patients, this is what we have to do.”
Ms Naicker said family support was important, especially when a family member tests positive.
“I’ll emphasize more on family support here because no one wants to test positive for this.
“It’s not easy, it’s challenging, but if I can do it, we can still recover from this, we can still fight.”
She said getting vaccinated minimised the effect of the virus.
“The vaccine protected me and allowed me to show only mild symptoms but if I wasn’t vaccinated, I would have shown severe COVID symptoms.”
2. DR BANDANA PRIYA PRASAD
On June 2, Doctor Bandana Priya Prasad tested positive for COVID-19.
It was a day after parts of the CWM Hospital were cordoned off as positive cases were identified amongst patients.
Doctor Bandana had contracted the virus from her husband, a physiotherapist also at the hospital.
She was one of the first lot of medical staff to test positive at the Emergency Department.
She was asymptomatic for whole 14 days of quarantine.
“We kind of anticipated that we might someday test positive if it wasn’t from the patients we serve here than it would be from the community, so it wasn’t surprising - we had prepared for it.”
Testing positive means her work colleagues have to also take on her work load.
“The only sad part was I was part of a three member team. When I tested positive, I had to step down and my two colleagues had to take on my load and they were working 14 days straight. They looked after patients inside the Emergency Department because they were my primary contacts.
“Yes we were short staffed at that time, but it didn’t let our spirit down because of teamwork.”
Despite the stress, health workers still did their best because they were trained to do so, Dr Bandana said.
She encouraged members of the public to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their family.
The escalating crisis will affect health workers, but they are prepared for it, she added.
3. MAMATUKI SOSEFO
Mamatuki Sosefo has been working for the Ministry of Health for 12 years.
In September last year, he was given the position of Nurse Unit Manager for the CWM Emergency Department. He supervises about 50 staff. Thirty-six are nurses.
He said at first it was a challenge for the staff to understand what COVID-19 was in order to carefully treat COVID patients.
“Earlier this year when the second outbreak hit the community, it did elevate the role and the response to be more proactive in terms of responding to patient care, looking at the resources of how we are going to respond to COVID, and also looking at the manpower and staffing,” he said.
“Initially, when the outbreak happened, our staff were well equipped to respond in the initial phase before it went into the community. Now my staff are getting infected because the virus has spread out into the community.”
He said safety was paramount when attending to patients.
“One of the important things that need to be adhered to is the infection prevention control measures before we attend to any emergency situations, because that actually supersedes any area of clinical expertise we provide as emergency doctors and nurses.
“So that transitional role was sort of a challenge because we are not used to wearing personal protective equipment on a daily basis.”
Misinformation shared widely on social media also had an impact on staff, Mr Sosefo said. Many were fearful. But now medical staff are comfortable nursing COVID positive patients.
Mr Sosefo’s only advice to the public is to get vaccinated. It’s the only protection from COVID-19.
“This virus is no joke, we see deaths on arrival, and patients coming in very sick and they succumb to the virus, we see deaths before arrival, we actually have our health staff who are serving the community even their loved ones are affected as well. Everyone is vulnerable, this virus does not discriminate.”