Ongole: Kin of emergency staff spend sleepless night

Ongole: When almost everyone in the town stays home due to lockdown, only a few from the emergency services like doctors, nurses, police, ambulance, press, sanitary staff, ward, and village volunteers are on duty. The people in these professions are prone to work with the persons suspected of Covid-19 and tested positive, but it is their family members who are the most emotionally affected section of society right now.

When The Hans India spoke to the people working in the emergency services, Lakshmi (name changed), a nurse in the RIMS Ongole said that it was part of their profession to work in such conditions and they were not worried about it. "But my most immediate concern is the emotional distress my family is going through. My husband and three-year-old daughter are at home along with my in-laws. They are always praying that the virus does not affect me since a positive case has been shifted to RIMS," she explained.

Ongole II Town circle inspector Munipalli Rajesh said that as part of the precautions, he was using sanitizer and masks to avoid Covid-19 danger. He said that he was taking extra care like leaving the uniform outside and having a bath before stepping into the residence, as a child was there in the family. A 108 ambulance driver said that they were the most vulnerable to coronavirus than any others. He said that they are guiding the suspected cases to wear the disposable dress, mask, and walking with him to the ambulance, to the isolation while all others are stopping at a distance.

He said that the family members of most of the drivers are asking them to stop going to the work, as the company does not value their services and asked to leave the company earlier. He said that he has no answer when his wife and son asked him about their fate if something happened to him.

The people working in the emergency services are mostly government contract employees and request the authorities to consider their dedicated services in this condition of raging pandemic while taking a decision on removing them in the future.