‘Please look after our children...’
NIPAH OUTBREAK Kerala nurse infected by virus penned a note to her husband asking him not to insist on seeing her
“I think I am almost on my way. I don’t think I will be able to meet you all again. Please look after our children well. Take them to the Gulf and don’t be all alone like our father, please,” wrote PN Lini, 32, the nurse who died of Nipah virus infection (NiV) on Sunday to her husband Sajish, who goes by one name.
Sajish had returned from Bahrain, where he works as an accountant, on Sunday to be with her, but she asked him not to insist on seeing her. Instead of meeting him, she sent him a hurriedly-scribbled note.
The second of three daughters of Radhamani and Nanu, Lini did her nursing in Bangaluru before joining EMS Memorial Co-Operative Hospital in Perambra as a part-time nurse.
She got ill after treating three patients who died of NiV infection.
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan paid homage to her and on social media, writing, “Her sacrifice is incomparable. Till her last she was dutiful.”
“I spoke to her before she got hospitalised and she was really worried over the death of Mohd Sadik, one of the first persons to die of NiV infection. She developed fever in a day or two after his death and passed away,” said Sajish, holding his two sons, aged five and two, close to him. He was lost for words when his younger son asked why their mother hadn’t come back home after night duty.
Since two children lived with their mother and the younger one was still being nursed before she was hospitalised, both children will also be tested for NiV once the family comes out shock.
Sajish is not complaining that the family was not able to see her and perform her last rites, but he was shocked by the callousness of some of the hospital’s staff.
The ambulance drivers at the medical college refused to carry her body to the electric crematorium till the police intervened, he said. “There is no place for emotions. If the situation warrants, we have to obey what the authorities say,” he said.
Lini’s colleagues at EMS Memorial Co-Operative Hospital recalled her as a quiet worker. She was on night duty when Mohammad Sadik, the first patient to die of NiV infection, was admitted. She nursed him till he was shifted to Kozhikode Medical College Hospital, where he died.
“None of us realised the gravity of the illness. We all thought it is a viral fever and treated the patients without masks and other protective gear,” said a senior nurse, who did not want to be named as she is not authorised to speak to the media.
At least three nurses have been hospitalised for symptoms of fever and headache in the isolation ward at the Medical College Hospital and their blood samples have been sent for testing to the National Virology Institute, Pune.
KOZHIKKODE: SPECIES THAT SPREAD INFECTION
Pteropus giganteus, Eonycteris spelaea, Cynopterus sphinx, Scotophilus kuhlii and Hipposideros larvatus are species of fruit bats found in India and have been known to be infected with the Nipah virus
FOOD & FLUIDS
Consuming food and fluids contaminated with saliva and droppings of infected bats
DATE PALM SAP
Eating fruits and drinking raw date palm sap eaten by infected bats
ANIMALS
Infection of domestic animals (cattle, pigs, goats) from eating food contaminated by infected bats’ saliva or droppings
PEOPLE
Human-to-human, through contaminated body fluids of an infected person