Unseen Warriors Of Covid

Unseen Warriors of COVID: Forced to beg for our rights, say Hyderabad's ASHA workers

Frontline and healthcare workers were assigned additional duties to help manage the public health emergency. But while the number of tasks expected of ASHAs kept increasing, the protective gear dwindled

Unseen Warriors of COVID: Villagers in rural Andhra depend on frontline workers toiling at ill-equipped PHCs

In Andhra Pradesh's Kurnool district, the lack of healthcare services and medical infrastructure often deny people from the most marginalised communities affordable and timely treatment

Unseen Warriors of COVID: In UP's Bijnor, paramedics and local doctors help villagers wary of hospitals

From checking up on patients showing symptoms of COVID-19, to providing them with medicines at low cost, physicians and paramedic staff provided the much-needed care as Bijnor battled the second wave

Unseen Warriors of COVID-19: 'Work must go on', say UP's ASHAs struggling with malfunctioning tools, public hostility

Every village has been witness to the spectre of death. Healthcare and diagnostic services exist in name only. The entire system is dependent on the ASHA workers and the ASHA Sangini

Unseen Warriors of COVID: From arranging oxygen to ambulances, volunteers in Kashmir battle stress to save lives

Volunteers at Social Reform Organisation (SRO) in Kashmir field anxious SOS calls, provide oxygen support to patients, arrange ambulance service, doctor consultations and burials while awaiting their own vaccines

Unseen Warriors of COVID: 'Death and grief has made us numb,' say Aligarh's overworked frontline workers

A large number of deaths and the atmosphere of helplessness around have also affected the doctors significantly, making them numb sometimes, or a soft target for the angry patients and their kin at other times

Unseen Warriors of COVID: Patients are dying like flies, say Kolkata's hospital staff working without PPE

One of the ward boys Firstpost spoke to hinted at heavy intake of alcohol to cope with the stress caused by proximity to death and human suffering." Soon I’ll become an alcoholic," he says

Unseen Warriors of COVID: 20 hour shifts, measly wages; how Delhi's crematorium workers are surviving a pandemic

Firstpost spoke to some of these workers to enquire about their working conditions and how they are coping with the situation. Here are edited excerpts

Unseen warriors of COVID: No rest for gravediggers in Bengaluru as crematoriums run out of space

At the city's Chamrajpet crematorium, authorities had to put up a 'housefull' sign and families were told to wait with bodies in ambulances to avoid overcrowding

Unseen Warriors of COVID: Patna's hearse drivers, crematorium workers live in fear of infection, social stigma

A crematorium worker gets only Rs 375 per body while a hearse driver is retained at a monthly pay of Rs 10,000 and is expected to be available at any and all hours due to the high body count in the pandemic situation