On 10 May, the helpline at the Srinagar-based nonprofit Social Reform Organisation Batamaloo (SRO) got an unusual SOS call — it was doctors from the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital, one of the largest tertiary care hospitals in Kashmir.
The caller sought the nonprofit’s help to provide an attendant to an abandoned Covid-19 patient suffering from tuberculosis and bilateral pneumonia. The woman, in her fifties, was abandoned by her family.
The woman, all alone in the grim Covid-19 ward, was admitted to the hospital by the police after they found her on a roadside. The SRO — which provides oxygen concentrators, other medical help, and alms to the needy — immediately dispatched a nurse to care for her.
The task was fraught with the risk of getting infected but that didn’t deter 25-year-old Anju Kour. She wore her protective gear and headed to the hospital from the nonprofits accomodation for nurses.
Kour holds a diploma in General Nursing and Midwifery and is part of a team of twelve nurses associated with SRO. Their task is to go to the houses of Covid-19 patients daily to assist with cleaning, feeding the sick, and administering injections.
