Goodbye, dear Lini
Nurse Lini Sajeesh from Perambra in Kerala gave up her life in the service of the sick and ailing.
It was the first outbreak of an endemic of an hitherto almost-unknown virus – the Nipah virus. For Lini, it must have been just another patient with fever. She nursed the person with compassion; she clearly was close enough to contract the viral infection and sadly, died.
Lini, we revere you; we wish all strength for your family to cope with the loss. We pray for you and for them.
How many Linis will we lose – Nipah virus now, something else later? There is a pattern to our reaction to calamities like this: a lot of emotion, a lot of tears, and soon, we forget. And we bring out the compassion and tears at the next calamity.
Pallium India swears to do something at least in our own work setting. Are we protecting our nursing and other clinical staff enough? Are enough safety measures in place? We swear to look into these things and to establish a system that will sustain itself so that our clinical staff, in future, will stay as protected as possible.
This is very sad and tragic. Let’s hope that the virus outbreak is brought under control quickly.