Twin doctors beat stigma and soldier on
Twins soldiered on despite threats on their lives
Just a month after they were released from a quarantine site in Limpopo, twins Mvuzo and Mvuyisi Nkcosolwana-Vili were stigmatised and threatened at home in Mthatha, Eastern Cape.
The community accused them of bringing the virus home from China where they were medical students. But they did not deter the now 31year-old medical students from the Hubei Polytechnic University in China. The twins were among 122 students from Wuhan who were quarantined at The Ranch Hotel outside Polokwane after they were repatriated from China in March last year.
Mvuzo said when the lockdown was announced in China they thought it would soon pass. “At the time nobody knew how long the lockdown would be. During the period, people started running out of food and the growing pressure of people wanting to go home was increasing. When it was announced that we were going home there was a sigh of relief.
He said they heard there were people who were against them coming back to SA and making threats but did not think much of it.
“When we got to Limpopo we had a hair-raising moment when our pilot broke into song and before we exited the plane we sang the national anthem. Our stay in quarantine was filled with emotions and a lot of testing. The challenge started when we reunited with our family members.
“Some people called us Covid or Chinese that brought the virus to the country. People did not want us to be in the same space as them. Even our family members were affected. It did not matter that we were in the frontline helping to fight the virus. There were those who wanted to burn our place and our car but we lived above that,” Mvuzo said.
He said it was their responsibility to educate people and help them understand because they had prepared themselves for something like that.
When they got to Mthatha they joined the Eastern Cape department of health’s joint operation committee to help come up with advice on how to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and how to assist affected people in rural areas.
“It was during this time that we both contracted Covid-19 in July and had to quarantine for 14 days. It was an emotional experience even though we knew it was inevitable to us as health workers. There was a colleague who had it very bad – he could not breathe. But people feared getting close to him and as sick as we were, we had no choice but to attend to him,” Mvuzo said.
The twins are now doing their clinical electives at the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in Mthatha and are only left with two months before they graduate.
Mvuyisi said unfortunately they could not return to China where they had studied for six years because the country closed its doors to international students, so they had to do their rounds in SA.
“Other students had to complete their studies using online platforms. On our side we are doing good and the Eastern Cape health department has been very supportive.”