2024-2028 UN-Philippines Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework

Who are the real-life heroes in the time of COVID-19?

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Op-ed by Mr. Gustavo Gonzalez, UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in the Philippines, for World Humanitarian Day 2020

essay on real heroes of covid 19

On World Humanitarian Day (WHD), 19 August, we celebrate and honor frontline workers, who, despite the risks, continue to provide life-saving support and protection to people most in need. On this day, we also commemorate humanitarians killed, harassed, and injured while performing their duty. This year’s theme is “Real-Life Heroes”.

But, what does it mean to be a hero? What does it take to help those in need, the poor and at-risk communities, those who are most vulnerable when a disaster strike? Why should we hold up as heroic the deeds of those who everyday continue to extend a helping hand?

As I write this, I am mourning the death of a UN colleague. He died last Friday, struck down by COVID-19, at the age of 32. As a team member of the UN’s Migration Agency, he showed exemplary dedication and commitment to the situation of migrants amidst this pandemic.

He was a true frontline hero, and he is not alone.

In these extraordinary times, and despite the very real danger to themselves, Filipino front line workers, like my fallen colleague, everyday put their own safety and well-being aside to provide life-saving support and protection to people most in need.

In the Philippines, every day since the beginning of the year, humanitarian workers have stood on the front lines dealing with the challenges arising from COVID-19 and other disaster events, like the displacement from the Taal Volcano eruption, the damage wrought by Typhoon Ambo, as well as continuing relief efforts in Marawi City and responding to those affected by the Cotabato and Davao Del Sur earthquakes. Despite the many risks, humanitarians continue to do their work, diligently and selflessly providing assistance to those who need it most.

Through years of responding to various emergencies and capitalizing on national expertise and capacity, the humanitarian community in the country has embraced a truly localized approach by recognizing what at-risk communities themselves can do in these challenging times. The private sector in the Philippines has also stepped up in sharing its resources and capabilities, joining with other humanitarian actors to support affected local governments and communities.

As we give recognition to local real-life heroes, we also need to protect and keep them free from harassment, threats, intimidation and violence. Since 2003, some 4,961 humanitarians around the world have been killed, wounded or abducted while carrying out their life-saving duties. In 2019 alone, the World Health Organization reported 1,009 attacks against health-care workers and facilities, resulting in 199 deaths and 628 injuries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled an important number of vulnerabilities as well as exposed our weaknesses in preventing shocks. It has also shown that the magnitude of the challenge is exceeding the response capacity of any single partner or country. It represents, in fact, one of the most dramatic calls to work together. The success of this battle will greatly rely on our capacity to learn from experience and remain committed to the highest humanitarian values. Our real-life heroes are already giving the example.

On 4 August, a revised version of the largest international humanitarian response plan in the country since Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 was released by the United Nations and humanitarian partners in the Philippines. Some 50 country-based UN and non-governmental partners are contributing to the response, bringing together national and international NGOs, faith-based organizations as well as the private sector.

COVID-19 might be today’s super-villain, but it does not deter our real-life heroes from doing their job and tirelessly working to find ways to combat the threat and eventually beat the invisible nemesis. We mourn the thousands who have lost their lives to the virus across the globe, including my colleague whom I have spoken of.

At the same time, we join Filipinos in upholding—in the midst of great adversity-- the tradition of celebrating the best of human kindness, generosity, social justice, human rights, solidarity and Bayanihan spirit. We celebrate what makes our front liners and humanitarian real-life heroes. We salute them for continuously putting their lives on the line, despite the risks and uncertainties. Their efforts must not be overlooked or forgotten.

Mabuhay ang Real-life Heroes! Happy World Humanitarian Day!

Gustavo Gonzalez is the United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in the Philippines

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More than three-quarters of the world’s poor rely on agriculture to earn a living.

Inspiring acts

Incredible people caring for those in need during COVID-19.

When I was a kid, my image of a hero was largely inspired by my dad’s collection of early Superman comics. I read them all. A “hero” was somebody who had supernatural powers like flying, laser vision, or the strength to bend steel.

As humans, of course, we’re all pretty limited in our physical powers. We don’t fly. We can’t see through walls. But what’s unbounded in us is our ability to see injustices and to take them on—often at great risk to ourselves.

My work in global health and development has introduced me to many extraordinary heroes with this kind of superpower. And I’ve had the honor of highlighting many of them on this blog : An epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox . A doctor working to end sexual violence in Africa. A researcher working to end hunger with improved crops. Just to name a few.

Why do we need heroes?

Because they represent the best of who we can be. Their efforts to solve the world’s challenges demonstrate our values as a society and they serve as powerful examples of how to make a positive difference in the world. And if enough people hear about their actions, they can inspire others to do something heroic too.

If there’s ever been a time that we need heroes, it’s now. The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented health and economic challenges, especially for the most vulnerable among us. The good news is that many people from all walks of life are doing their part to help them. Health care workers. Scientists. Firefighters. Grocery store workers. Aid workers. Vaccine trial participants. And ordinary citizens caring for their neighbors.

Here are portraits of a few individuals from around the world working to alleviate suffering during this pandemic. I hope their stories inspire you just as much as they have me.

To these heroes and heroes everywhere, thank you for the work you do!

1. One million bars of soap and counting

For the last four years, Basira Popul has been a dedicated polio worker in Afghanistan, traveling from home to home to help vaccinate children and bring an end to the crippling disease.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Basira Popul knocks on the door of a house during home visits, distributing soap and educating families about the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, social distancing restrictions forced the polio workers to pause their vaccination campaigns. But that didn’t stop their efforts to improve the health of the communities they serve. Instead of vaccinating for polio, Basira and thousands of her colleagues are now distributing bars of soap and giving hygiene lessons to curb the spread of the virus.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Basira demonstrates proper handwashing to children in the Surkh-Rōd District, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.

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Basira speaks with a mother about proper sanitation, hygiene, and handwashing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

They have raised awareness of the coronavirus throughout the country and given out more than one million bars of soap to help keep families in Afghanistan safe.

2. It’s a hot and uncomfortable job, but she loves it

As a COVID-19 tester in Bangalore, India, Shilpashree A.S. (Like many people in India, she uses initials referring to her hometown and her father’s name as her last name.) dons PPE, including a protective gown, goggles, latex gloves, and a mask. Then, she steps inside a tiny booth with two holes for her arms to reach through to perform nasal swab tests on long lines of patients.

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Shilpashree A.S., a COVID-19 tester and lab technician, tests a patient who exhibits COVID-19 symptoms, from within a booth at the Jigani Primary Health Center in Bengaluru, India.

She has a critical job during this pandemic, but it comes with many hardships. “It’s hot and uncomfortable,” Shilpashree said of the hours she spends dressed in layers of protective gear inside the booth.

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Shilpashree and other health workers get organized to carry out tests on the side of the road in Bengaluru, India.

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Patients line up at the Jigani Primary Health Center for COVID-19 testing in Bengaluru, India.

The challenges continue after work. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, she is not allowed to have contact with her family. For the last five months she’s only been able to visit with them on video calls. “I haven’t yet seen my children or hugged them,” she said. “It is like seeing a fruit from up-close but not eating it.” Still, there is no other job she would rather be doing right now. “Even though this involves risk, I love this job. It brings me happiness,” she said.

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After a long day of testing, Shilpashree inputs the test results into a centralized database.

3. Trial benefits

Scientists around the world are racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine. There are more than 150 vaccine candidates in development and dozens of trials underway. All these trials need volunteers willing to step forward and help test whether the vaccine is effective and safe. One of those volunteers is Thabang Seleke from Soweto, South Africa.

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Thabang Seleke plays with his youngest child in front of his home in South Africa after returning from the clinic where he is participating in Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine trial.

Thabang is participating in the first African trial of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine, which was developed by the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford. It is also undergoing trials in the UK, U.S., and Brazil. The South Africa trial involves 2,000 volunteers within the Soweto area of Johannesburg, and is being run by Shabir Madhi, Professor of Vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Thabang, who lives in Soweto, South Africa, takes a local taxi to visit the clinic where researchers will monitor his symptoms and immune responses during the vaccine trial.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Thabang has blood and swab samples taken during each visit to the clinic to make sure he remains COVID-19 negative and there are no negative side effects from the vaccine.

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Thabang double checks his vaccine trial paperwork after finishing his clinic visit.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Professor Shabir Madhi, who is managing the South African vaccine trial, shows Thabang how to fill in his diary card where he will log his symptoms and any side effects he may experience from the vaccine.

In South Africa, more than 600,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 13,000 people have died from it since March. Thabang heard about the trial from a friend and stepped forward to join to help bring an end to the coronavirus in Africa and beyond. This trial, Thabang said, “will benefit the whole world.”

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Thabang poses with his family outside their home in Soweto.

4. The best of humanity at a time of crisis

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Sikander Bizenjo, founder of Balochistan Youth Against Corona, smiles with children in an isolated tribal settlement in Naal, Balochistan, Pakistan, after distributing food assistance to the community.

When COVID-19 spread into Pakistan, Sikander Bizenjo knew where the pandemic would have the biggest impact: on the poorest areas of his country, including places like his home province of Balochistan. More than 70 percent of the population in this arid, mountainous region in southwestern Pakistan lives in poverty and struggles to gain access to education and health care.

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Balochistan Youth Against Corona volunteers pack ration bags for the food distribution drive.

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A young child stands inside their home after receiving a ration bag and soap from Balochistan Youth Against Corona.

Sikander had moved away from Balochistan to Karachi, where he is now a manager at a business school. But he knew he needed to do something to help his home during the pandemic. After reaching out to local government officials and aid organizations, he learned that many families lacked food and that health facilities had shortages of medical equipment. So he founded a group called the Balochistan Youth Against Corona, which raises funds for monthly food rations for 10,000 households in Balochistan as well of personal protective equipment, masks, face shields and hand sanitizers for frontline health workers.

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Sikander works on the distribution drive from his grandfather’s home in Naal, Balochistan.

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Sikander speaks to villagers about the importance of soap and handwashing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while distributing soap packets to them.

The support from other volunteers and donors has been overwhelming, he said. “I’ve seen the very best of humanity come out of this pandemic. People have been supporting us. People have been so kind and generous,” he said.

5. Tuning into better health with Sister Banda

If you have a question about COVID-19 in Zambia, you’ll want to tune into FM 99.1 Yatsani Community Radio. You’ll get advice on how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus from Catholic nun and social worker Sister Astridah Banda.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Catholic nun and social worker Sister Astridah Banda prepares to record her COVID-19 Awareness Program on Yatsani Community Radio in Lusaka, Zambia.

Sister Banda is not a doctor, but she is a passionate public health advocate. When the coronavirus arrived in Zambia, she noticed that most of the public health bulletins about social distancing, masks, and handwashing were being written in English. While English is an official language in Zambia, many people speak one of Zambia’s seven local languages and they were missing out on this critical information. Sister Banda wanted everyone to have access. So, in March, she approached Yatsani Community Radio and asked to start broadcasts where she could translate health bulletins into Zambia’s local languages and provide other critical news on the coronavirus. Her show, which airs several times each week, is produced in a talk show format with various guests who discuss specific health topics and answer questions from callers.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

When she’s not on the air, Sister Banda gives lessons to community leaders in Lusaka, Zambia on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including good hand washing practices.

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Sister Banda (right) with Sister Christabel Kazembe preparing face masks for community distribution in Lusaka, Zambia.

It now reaches more than 1.5 million people, creating a community of listeners looking out for one another to get through this pandemic. “The whole pandemic has brought humanity together,” she said. “We realize that our life is actually short and we need to spend most of it building on what is important. And these are relationships. Getting in touch with one another, being there for each other.”

6. “The answers lie within each of us”

When the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the Navajo and Hopi Reservations, Ethel Branch grew alarmed that her community didn’t have what it needed to deal with the virus.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

A building near the highway depicting mask awareness in the time of COVID-19 on the Navajo reservation in Cameron, Arizona.

The Navajo and Hopi Reservations have many elderly people living without electricity or running water who would need support. She decided she should try to do something about it. Ethel, a former attorney general for the Navajo Nation, resigned from her job at a law firm. She created a GoFundMe page and built an organization called Navajo Hopi Solidarity to help bring relief to the elderly, single parents, and struggling families. To date, she has raised over $5 million. Other community members also found ways to help, including Wayne Wilson and his son, Shelvin, who deliver water to dozens of families in need.

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Ethel Branch, founder of Navajo Hopi Solidarity, a COVID-19 relief organization, poses with her 6-month old son in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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Many parts of the Navajo Nation don’t have access to water. Wayne Wilson and his son Shelvin bring water to vulnerable families throughout the reservation.

Ethel’s organization has assisted 5,000 families across the reservations. She works with young volunteers from the reservations to deliver food to those in need. “It’s been really amazing. The teamwork, people just stepping forward and making things happen,” she said. “The answers lie within each of us. Each of us has the ability to make choices and to take action and have a positive impact on our community.”

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Volunteers for the relief organization Navajo Hopi Solidarity deliver food to families in need in Chinle, Arizona.

7. A long journey to better women’s health

Even before COVID-19, Laxmi Rayamajhi’s job providing birth control services in the remotest areas of Nepal was never easy.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Laxmi Rayamajhi hikes to provide family planning services at Bela, Panchkhal Municipality-10, Kavrepalanchok, Nepal.

As a community health worker for Marie Stopes International, she hikes for hours over hazardous terrain, crossing rivers and landslides to reach the villages she services. But the pandemic has created new obstacles. A national lockdown, supply chain disruptions, and overwhelmed health facilities have all made it more difficult to deliver sexual and reproductive health care services to women in Nepal. And many women won’t visit local health facilities to seek care because they fear they will be infected with the coronavirus.

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Laxmi talks to local women about family planning and reproductive health.

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Laxmi counsels one of her clients at a remote health post in Nepal.

These healthcare challenges are being experienced by women throughout the world. According to one estimate, if these disruptions continue, 49 million additional women in low- and middle-income countries will go without contraceptives over the next year, leading to 15 million additional unplanned pregnancies. Still, Laxmi and thousands of care providers like her are working tirelessly to overcome these obstacles.

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Laxmi inserts a long-lasting contraceptive implant in a client visiting a remote health post in Nepal. The implant prevents pregnancy for up to 5 years.

Laxmi continues to make her long journeys through Nepal to remote health posts to provide care to women in need. For those not comfortable seeing her in-person, she now provides phone consultations. “With my efforts, if women’s health gets better, and creates a healthy impact in our communities, I am grateful,” she said.

Meet more of my heroes in the field

essay on real heroes of covid 19

This year signaled the start of a new era. Here’s why I believe next year is an opportunity to shape the world’s next chapter for the better.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

What the biggest country in South America can teach the world about healthcare.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

I got to meet with amazing scientists working on the next big breakthrough while I was in Dakar.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

A city-dwelling mosquito threatening Africa sparks innovation in the fight against malaria.

This is my personal blog, where I share about the people I meet, the books I'm reading, and what I'm learning. I hope that you'll join the conversation.

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Meet the COVID-19 frontline heroes

Molly Kinder · May 2020

Part of an ongoing series

The COVID-19 frontline

Despite the hardships and health risks, millions of essential frontline workers continue to do their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. These hardworking heroes are keeping Americans fed, picking up their trash, providing them life-saving medicine, delivering their groceries and packages, preparing their food, cleaning their hospitals, caring for those who are most vulnerable, and keeping us safe—often while earning low wages and few benefits.

In this series, I will introduce you to some of these frontline workers: In their own words, they share the risks and challenges they face, the concerns they have, and how they are coping. They will highlight what policymakers, employers, and each of us can do to better protect and support them.

Unsung health heroes

Although doctors and nurses—who earn a median wage of $105 per hour and $34 per hour, respectively—receive the lion’s share of public recognition for their life-saving role in the fight against COVID-19, they represent less than 20% of all essential health workers.

Millions of other health workers earn significantly lower wages while receiving less public recognition for their roles, despite their sacrifices. Nearly 7 million essential workers are employed in low-wage health jobs on the COVID-19 front lines, including:

  • Health care support workers such as orderlies and phlebotomists
  • Direct care workers such as home health and personal care aides
  • Health care service workers such as housekeepers and cooks

Median wages across these occupations were just $13.48 per hour in 2019—well short of a living wage. More than 80% of them are women, and they are also disproportionately workers of color.

Learn more about the essential role they are playing in the pandemic and what policymakers and employers should do to better protect, compensate, support, and respect them.

Source: Data from May 2019 Occupational Employment Statistics and the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey

Grocery workers

Across the country, more than two million people work in grocery stores. Deemed essential businesses, grocery stores and supermarkets are staying open even in the worst-hit communities.

Due to close proximity and frequent face-to-face interaction with customers and colleagues, grocery workers are highly exposed to COVID-19 , and the virus has already killed several of them . Employers have responded with new safety measures , but more aggressive safeguards and wider access to personal protective equipment (PPE) are needed.

Pay for most grocery workers is low. Grocery cashiers earn a median wage of just $10.93/hour . Employer-provided benefits are rare for non-unionized grocery workers. Prior to the start of the pandemic, Walmart and Kroger, the country’s two largest grocery chains, offered hundreds of thousands of workers no paid sick leave. Most large grocery chains have introduced temporary COVID-19 sick leave as well as one-time bonuses or hazard pay of an additional $2/hour.

Portrait of Yvette Beatty

Yvette Beatty

Home health aide · Age 60

“I am feeling scared. Saying goodbye to my family, I don’t know if it is going to be the last goodbye.”

“I hope and pray to God I would never get it. I don’t think I would even go home. I would tell my kids: Give me a tent, feed me from the outside.

“We are running around with no protective gear. I would love to see us have hazard masks, instead of putting cloths over our face or going to the Dollar Store and buying dollar masks. We are taking a chance on our life, too. We need equipment.

“You’re telling me, before you pushed out these trillions and millions of dollars, you couldn’t push this out for us? You couldn’t push it out for these people who are on trash trucks, who are mopping floors, who are picking up biowaste, who are home health aides? We right here on the front line, we need you too. Open up. It is time to wake and recognize us.”

Portrait of Tony Powell

Tony Powell

Hospital administrative coordinator · Age 62

“We are like soldiers marching into battle, but you don’t have enough guns.”

“It’s just overwhelming, the amount that you will go through every day having to be on the front lines. A lot of people can work from home. They don’t understand what it means.

“Nobody recognizes those workers that are really on the front line. People are recognizing doctors and nurses. But they’re not recognizing dietary, environmental service, CNAs. These are the people doing all the main grunt work that has to be done. Nobody is telling them, ‘We appreciate what you do. We realize you have a family. We realize you are underpaid. We realize you are understaffed.

“People are not looking at people like us on the lower end of the spectrum. We’re not even getting respect. That is the biggest thing: we are not even getting respect. Nobody is listening to their voices. Maybe they’ll wake up and see: Oh, these are the people that are actually taking care of the people that need to be taken care of. ”

Portrait of Andrea

Hospital housekeeper · Age 29

“One minute you are important enough. The next minute, you aren’t that important to get the proper equipment, but you are important enough to clean for the next patient.”

“We had one patient that we thought had the virus. We asked the charge nurse to send us to get fit-tested for the N95 mask that everyone was wearing. Her response was, ‘No, these are for special people.’ And we were just like, ‘We are here to clean the room and make sure no one else gets the virus, and you are telling us that these are for special people?’

“I’ve been on my unit for seven years. We are on the same unit every day, with the same people. I don’t even think my charge nurse knows my name. They just see us as housekeeping. That is what they call us.

“It shouldn’t take such a trying time for us to get recognized, considering we are the heart of the hospital. We are making sure that family members aren’t coming home with new germs and with new illnesses, because we are keeping the hospital clean. I don’t think it should be like: Oh yeah, let’s recognize them now, because we need them. It’s something that I think should have been going on.”

Portrait of David Saucedo

David Saucedo

Nursing home cook · Age 52

“I am having to argue for my supplies. It makes me feel secondary, not equal. You are expendable in a way.”

“I deal with patients who are not capable of taking care of themselves, that have dementia. I accepted that head-on because I have two handicapped brothers. My heart always goes to people who cannot help themselves. I really care for all my patients.

“Whatever infections they have, it all is going to end up in the kitchen. The Alzheimer’s patients don’t know about ‘six feet, keep your distance.’ They just come up to you, grab you, and sit and talk to you. I need to protect them as much as I need to protect myself. The last thing I want to do is get one of my patients sick or one of my loved ones sick.

“When I was in the Navy, when we went to war, I was getting paid hazardous duty pay. Okay, I signed up to work in a hospital, I knew germs were going to be there. But, had everyone knew coronavirus was going to come, how many people would have decided not to work in a hospital? To me, it is a hazardous job right now. We should be getting paid hazardous pay."

Portrait of Sabrina Hopps

Sabrina Hopps

Acute care facility housekeeping aide · Age 46

“Housekeepers are the number-one hero. If housekeeping does not clean the rooms correctly, the pandemic will be worse than what it is.”

“I clean patient rooms in the ICU department. Those are the sickest people. It scares me because I can be cleaning a patient’s room and the patient can have the coronavirus and I would never know. I have asthma, and my son has asthma. My son is a cancer survivor. I am petrified to not know what is going on or what the patients have.

“I feel we should be getting extra compensation. We are supposed to get a 3% bonus. With my pay, at $14.60 an hour, 3% isn't going to do nothing. If pay was better, I would be able to live on my own and so could my children. What I make, it is not enough. So I am forced to share an apartment with my son and daughter and my granddaughter. Going back and forth to work, I am jeopardizing their lives, their safety, especially my son’s. His immune system is shot, just like mine.

“If I didn’t love what I do, I could have walked away and sat at home, like half the world, and got unemployment. But that’s not me. The patients deserve better. It is me and the other housekeepers who sit and talk with the patients to brighten up their day, because they don’t have family members visiting now. As long as God put me on this earth, I am going to continue to go to work.”

Portrait of Elizabeth Peachy

Elizabeth Peachy

Home health aide · Age 49

“It’s not really about the money, because it isn’t enough to live on, to be honest.”

“We do not get any benefits. We are not given any PPE. We’re not given any resources other than an online website. In one day, I was in West Virginia, trying to find PPE. I would be in Augusta, I would be in Wardensville, Baker, and in Moorefield. I would be in Winchester, Virginia, Front Royal, in Stephens City. We have people going in homes, and we get no PPE.

“Without home care workers to care for these high-risk patients, they will become sick even without the COVID-19. We bathe them, we feed them, we clean them. We take them to the doctor appointments, we take them to the hospital, we take them to get blood work. We buy their groceries.

“I can guarantee you, if these workers don’t come out to these homes and they do not provide care to these high-risk patients, they will get sick and thousands will be in the hospital. And they will be flooded with these patients.”

Portrait of Pauline Moffitt

Pauline Moffitt

Home health aide · Age 50

“I pray always: Lord, please stretch my pay. Please. It is a struggle.”

“We do a lot. We do more than even nurses and doctors. We go beyond just cleaning, changing diapers. We are their family. We are their eyes and their ears. You keep them company, you make them laugh, you cheer them up. Sometimes mentally, it is a challenge for us, it breaks us down. At the end of the day, you are tired.

“The work is more than the pay. They cut back my pay to $9 an hour. I spend more than I make. It is a struggle. I live in a low-income home. My husband right now because of the virus is out of a job. I have to pay a lot of bills. What am I supposed to do? I just wish they would raise it and give us a little more. Not just for me, but all the other home health aides that are in the same situation.”

Portrait of Ditanya Rosebud

Ditanya Rosebud · Age 46

Nursing home cook and hostess

“I am diabetic, I am asthmatic. I don’t want to bring this home to my kids.”

“I understand we signed up to work in a nursing home. But we didn’t sign up for this pandemic. We wanted to make sure that our residents are well taken care of, well fed, the place is clean and sanitized. We didn’t come in to say: Well today might be your last day.

“We—the CNAs, the GNAs, housekeeping, dietary, laundry—we are right there. Still bringing supplies. Still cleaning. Still cooking. Still interacting with the residents. We come to work on days that we aren’t even scheduled for because we have so many other employees out. And all they can say to us is, ‘This is what you signed up for.’ It is frustrating. I am pissed off.

“Our situation will be better if we can get appreciation. That sounds crazy: appreciation. A thank you. ‘I am glad you are here, thank you for coming to work.’ Hazard pay. Anything. Somebody do something! The company shows no compassion. We are just another body. That’s it. No more, no less. But I continue to go because those residents also need somebody there for them. They can’t see their family members, they can’t go out of their rooms. So we try to find little things to do. I just love the work.”

Portrait of Amber Stevens

Amber Stevens

Cashier at Shoppers · Age 30

“It is very tiresome on the body, as well as scary on the mind.”

“We are tired. The past 3 to 4 weeks have been consistent, nonstop people. They haven’t really put a limit on how many people can come in at a time. We don’t have restricted hours. It is worrisome.”

“I come home to my little one. I want to go home and see my mom. You don’t want to pick up anything at work and bring it back to your family. It is very scary.”

Portrait of Courtney Meadows

Courtney Meadows

Cashier at Kroger · Age 37

“We are no longer being seen as bottom feeders. It’s sad that it took this pandemic for people to see how really valuable we are.”

“I live in the coal fields of West Virginia. If you don’t have a medical degree, a law degree, or you’re a coal miner or something of that nature, then you have minimum wage jobs. People just look down on you, thinking, that that is all that you can get.”

“Now they are seeing, ‘these people are really putting their lives on the line. These people are worth more than what they make. These people are out here and they are serving us and being positive.’ The customers are grateful for it. It makes me proud.”

Portrait of Jeffrey Reid

Jeffrey Reid

Meat clerk at Giant · Age 54

“It’s just the sheer enormity of this pandemic. You can see it in people. You can see fear. You can see pandemonium.”

“Someone will come around the aisle, they have the shopping cart, the gloves on, a mask on. You step back and think, ‘Wow, man, this is really happening.’”

“I am a hard worker. I get up every day, I do my 8 hours, it’s like a routine. Now overnight, I am thrust on the frontlines of this. The governors are saying you are essential personnel, the president is thanking grocery workers. I saw in line this little kid yesterday on National Superhero Day, dressed up as a clerk in one of his favorite grocery chains. I am fascinated and excited by it.”

Portrait of Lisa Harris

Lisa Harris

Cashier at Kroger · Age 32

“The pay isn't enough. I have coworkers that serve people every day, and then have to go pay for their own groceries with food stamps.”

“I understand that catching the coronavirus is a very good possibility given I see 300 customers a day. I am grateful for my health care that the union fought for. I pray a lot.”

“I am going to attempt to work through this at risk to myself. A lot of my coworkers are in the same boat because they can't afford to do otherwise. The atmosphere is anxiety ridden, hurried, and on edge. The customers are now saying thank you for your hard work. We would like to hear that from our company.”

Portrait of Matt Milzman

Matt Milzman

Cashier at Safeway · Age 29

“Realize that we are just as at risk as anyone who has been designated emergency personnel. I don’t have any special degrees to work grocery, but you have to eat.”

“To be honest with you, I am scared. I’m a religious man. Besides my normal prayers I do every day, I never did much special praying before I went to work. Before every shift, I am doing that now.”

“This is a virus, this isn’t just a slip and fall at work. It is going to hurt my kids, my community. I live in an apartment building. We live on top of each other. This thing spreads like crazy.”

Portrait of Michelle Lee

Michelle Lee

Cashier at Safeway · Age 51

“Today I rang up an $800 order. My back was hurting, my arm was hurting. My coworkers are saying their bodies are starting to wear down.”

“We aren’t staying six feet away from the customers. When we ring them up, they are like two feet away from us. We check out 200 customers a day. A doctor can wear a mask and protective gear. We don’t have all of that.”

“My concern is not just for me, but for all of my coworkers. I know a lot of my coworkers have little children. Some of my coworkers have some illnesses that they are fighting. A lot of my coworkers can't afford to be off work for a long period of time.”

We are enormously grateful to each of these workers for sharing their stories and to UFCW Local 400 for their collaboration. We thank Amber, Courtney, Jeffrey, Lisa, Matt and Michelle, and each and every worker on the frontline, for the sacrifices they are making on behalf of all of us.

Photos taken by Molly Kinder: Amber Stevens, Jeffrey Reid, Lisa Harris, Matt Milzman, and Michelle Lee. Photo of Courtney Meadows taken by Mark Covey.

These interviews were conducted by Molly Kinder between March 19, 2020 and April 8, 2020. Participants have provided permission to Brookings to use their names, likenesses, transcribed words, and audio for this series.

We are enormously grateful to each of these workers for sharing their stories, Thanks to PHI, SEIU, SEIU Local 1199, Angelina Drake, Tatia Cooper, Yvonne Slosarski, Leslie Frane and LaNoral Thomas for their collaboration with the worker interviews. We thank Tony, Andrea, Yvette, David, Sabrina, Elizabeth, Pauline, Ditanya, and each and every worker on the front line for the sacrifices they are making on behalf of all of us.

These interviews were conducted between April 1, 2020 and April 28, 2020. Participants have provided permission to Brookings to use their names, likenesses, transcribed words, and audio for this series.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

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The unsung pandemic heroes, extraordinary people are going above and beyond to serve their communities..

Judith Candiru, an Assistant Nursing Officer in Uganda's Yumbe District, poses for a photo.

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For some it's a sense of duty. For others it's an obligation. And then there are those for which it’s a necessity.  

Two years ago the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. Nobody knew exactly what lay ahead. But over the course of the following 24 months, extraordinary women and men have risen to the occasion to serve their communities. 

Their names aren't necessarily recognizable. But the actions of these heroes have without a shadow of a doubt made our world a safer, better place. We want to introduce you to just a few of these incredible people. 

A Ugandan healthcare worker uses a megaphone to encourage her community to get vaccinated 

When Judith Candiru was growing up, she always admired the white outfits nurses wore. For her, it was emblematic of the care they provided. Now she’s one of them. She takes pride in putting on that sharp uniform, complete with a yellow belt.  

Judith Candiru, an Assistant Nursing Officer in the Yumbe District of Uganda, provides COVID-19 vaccination services to her community.

COVID-19 has been personal for Candiru. She contracted the virus at one point and recalls the stigma she and her family endured at the time.  

“This was the saddest moment of my career. I and my family were shunned by the community.”  

It didn’t stop her though. She recovered and bounced back to work. Candiru passionately serves the people of Yumbe District in northern Uganda, which straddles the border with South Sudan.  

Judith Candiru travels on the back of a bike, holding a megaphone, to deliver crucial information and deliver healthcare services to her community.

In the morning, she heads to the maternity ward where she cares for premature babies. Through UNICEF-supported training, she’s able to support sick infants and ensure they thrive. 

But that’s just part of her day. Throughout the pandemic, after consultations and finishing her rounds on the ward, she’ll head out into the local community either on a motorbike or on foot. 

Equipped with a megaphone, Candiru has been amplifying the message that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and important. Her message has resonated. Members of the community trust her, and that’s evident as one by one they sit on a bench and receive their shots from Candiru.  

Climbing mountains and crossing canyons in Nepal with vaccines on her back 

Birma Kunwar has been weaving her way up mountains and across suspended footbridges for years now. With a box of vaccines perched on her back , she ascends hilly pathways in the remote part of Nepal’s far west.  

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Kunwar would collect lifesaving vaccines in the town of Khalanga, which is the district headquarters of the Darchula District. Those doses were mainly for the routine immunization of children that lived in the villages that nest on the hillside she climbs.  

The pandemic brought a new challenge and a new opportunity: “I’ve been walking the same path but with these new vaccines,” she says.

Birma Devi Kunwar takes COVID-19 vaccines on her back to remote hillside communities in Nepal.

Her destination on this journey is a health post in the village of Duhun. And at some times of the year, it can only be reached on foot.  

“The roads here are unreliable for many months of the year, particularly during the monsoon,” Kunwar notes as she explains the dangers posed by landslides. “It’s a risky ride.” 

After walking for hours, Birma Kunwar administers vaccines to families at the Pipalchauri Health Post in Nepal's remote far-west.

So with the weight of a community’s health on her back, she often walks the entire stretch. That takes between three to four hours. For Kunwar, that journey is well worth it. Delivering essential vaccines to these communities is not only a job for her, it’s a duty.  

“People are eagerly waiting for vaccines, they ask me constantly when they will arrive, when they can get it, when it will be their turn. All the time.” 

The teenage innovator whose invention is making handwashing safer 

Emmanuel Cosmos Msoka is an innovator and an activist. It’s no coincidence that the 18-year-old from Tanzania invented a crucial hygiene tool during the pandemic that has a water theme to it. 

“I was born at the foot of Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro," he says. The only place in my country where water turns to snow and ice.” 

18-year-old Emmanuel Cosmas Msoka, who is an innovator and activist in Tanzania, poses for a photo.

Emmanuel grew up with a desire to change the way things are normally done and to help solve social problems. That’s what he’s achieved . When COVID-19 arrived in Tanzania and his community struggled to combat the disease, he stepped up.  

His idea: a handwashing machine that uses foot pedals to function, in turn reducing the chance of spreading the virus. Since developing the technology, he’s been able to supply over 400 handwashing stations across northern Tanzania.  

For his work, Emmanuel was appointed as a UNICEF Youth Advocate and nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, awarded annually to a child who has made a significant contribution to advocating for children’s rights.  

Caring for her siblings while studying in times of loss  

Keysha is 14 years old. But her wisdom and thoughtfulness go beyond her years, as she’s had to grow up fast. Her mother, who worked at a restaurant, lost her life to COVID-19. 

“Our mother worked 12-hour days when the restaurant opened for business again,” Keysha says. “Her immune system was weak, that’s probably why she got COVID.” 

14-year-old Keysha, stands on the right next to her two younger siblings, Afiqa and Khansa.

Keysha has had to take on more responsibility, caring for her two younger siblings . She’s been looking after her 7-year-old sister Afiqa whose been particularly affected. After school, Afiqa will often retreat to her room and spend hours watching family videos with her mother’s voice.  

In addition to her caregiving role, Keysha is aware of her father’s financial struggles as the family’s sole breadwinner. He works as a parking attendant at the restaurant where his late wife also worked. So, to help out, Keysha is planning to enroll in a vocational school that will enable her to get a job faster and support her father.

“I can do anything – perhaps even go to university one day.” 

14-year-old Keysha works on a school assignment at her home in Sragen in Indonesia.

Along with her siblings, Keysha is among tens of thousands of children that have lost a parent or caregiver due to COVID-19 in Indonesia. They’re being assisted by UNICEF’s mental health and psychosocial support programme, with the help of local governments. 

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Meet the everyday heroes of the pandemic

Volunteers at the North Enfield Foodbank Charity unload donations for the foodbank in Enfield as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in London, Britain March 24, 2020.

Volunteers at the North Enfield Foodbank Charity in the UK unload donations. Image:  REUTERS/John Sibley

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Stay up to date:.

  • Volunteers are becoming heroes of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • In Poland, they are keeping hard-pressed medics supplied with coffee and lunch.
  • In New York, they are packing food for people who can no longer afford to buy it.
  • In Australia, a bookstore is delivering by bike to isolated people.

Amid all the suffering and anxiety caused by the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers across the globe are showing courage and resilience in helping some of the most vulnerable.

From keeping people supplied with basics during lockdowns, to helping the elderly and confused protect themselves, here are three stories of heroism during the crisis.

1. Feeding the hungry in a city under lockdown

New York City has the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, exceeding even those at the outbreak’s epicentre in China’s Hubei province.

Even in normal times, New York City has an estimated 1.2 million people who are short of food. City Harvest usually delivers basics to people who can't afford to buy food in five of the city’s boroughs. But the New York lockdown threatened to halt their vital work.

Volunteers pack food for families who can't buy food at City Harvest, who say they have seen a surge in the number of people who need their service due to the impact of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in New York City, U.S., March 20, 2020.

Undaunted, volunteers are continuing to pack food for distribution, sorting fresh produce such as corn and cabbage - but working spaced out to avoid spreading infection.

"It's important to serve the community, to serve other people," one of the volunteers, Kent Gasser, told Reuters.

"And there's always a need."

Chief Operating Officer Jen McLean says she sees the number of hungry people growing every day.

“What I've seen is an outpouring of people wanting to help. I know we all feel the love right now. We just need to keep our distance so that we can get this food packed and out to people that are relying on it."

2. Delivering coffee and walking the dogs

Streets in the Polish city of Wroclaw are deserted as people obey instructions to stay home . But the calm is deceptive. In the city’s hospitals, medical staff are working flat out to help those suffering with COVID-19.

Volunteer Robert Wagner is delivering coffee, energy drinks, water and packed lunches to paramedics and doctors working overtime.

“We are trying to support medical professionals, working a dozen or so hours a day to protect us against coronavirus," he says.

After Joanna Cieslik's restaurant was ordered to close, along with all the city’s other cafes and restaurants, she decided to cook nourishing dishes and deliver them free to those most in need, including the elderly, sick and homeless.

“We organized crowdfunding, thanks to which we can deliver meals to the most deprived persons free of charge,” Cieslik says.

Marta Listwan created a group on Facebook called "Visible Hand" that coordinates volunteer efforts, including walking dogs for people who can't leave their homes. More than 17,000 people have signed up so far.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community , which is at the centre of the World Economic Forum’s mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

Since its launch on 11 March, the Forum’s COVID Action Platform has brought together 1,667 stakeholders from 1,106 businesses and organizations to mitigate the risk and impact of the unprecedented global health emergency that is COVID-19.

The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched – bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

3. Pedalling books to help people in quarantine

As the UN warns of the mental health effects of the coronavirus pandemic , one Australian bookstore has found a novel way of getting books to people in isolation.

With most shops closed and people self-isolating at home, Gleebooks is using a free bicycle delivery service to get books to customers stuck in their homes.

"Books are a nice way of travelling without having to go anywhere," says the store’s cyclist Nerida Ross.

"I think there's a lot of anxiety. People are pretty uncertain so they're just really grateful to still be able to access the things that give them joy, without having to leave the house," says Ross.

With many schools closed, the store is selling more children’s activity and craft books.

“We're learning a new way of being, and I think reading is a really big part of that for people."

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T he term “ frontline workers ” often conjures images of doctors in Hazmat suits and soldiers in uniform. But during the coronavirus outbreak , workers across a vast array of industries have found themselves essential parts of the machine that keeps the world in motion, required to do their jobs despite great risk—whether hog farm employees or bus drivers , mental health counselors or police officers . Here, as part of TIME’s new issue, frontline workers of all types share their triumphs and fears in their own voices.

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Health Care Heroes of the COVID-19 Pandemic

  • 1 Dr Bauchner is Editor in Chief, JAMA and JAMA Network, and Mr Easley is Publisher, Periodical Publications, JAMA Network
  • Editorial To JAMA Authors, Reviewers, and Especially Physician Readers—A Profound Thank You Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, MBA; Howard Bauchner, MD; Robert Golub, MD JAMA
  • Viewpoint Priorities for the US Health Community Responding to COVID-19 Amesh A. Adalja, MD; Eric Toner, MD; Thomas V. Inglesby, MD JAMA
  • Viewpoint Supporting the Health Care Workforce During the COVID-19 Global Epidemic James G. Adams, MD; Ron M. Walls, MD JAMA
  • A Piece of My Mind Personal Risk and Societal Obligation Amidst COVID-19 Cynthia Tsai, MD JAMA
  • Viewpoint Understanding and Addressing Anxiety Among Healthcare Professionals During the COVID-19 Pandemic Tait Shanafelt, MD; Jonathan Ripp, MD, MPH; Mickey Trockel, MD, PhD JAMA

The COVID-19 pandemic has accounted for tens of thousands of deaths and ultimately will affect millions more people who will survive. There will be time to mourn the victims and care for the survivors. But it is also time to recognize and thank some of the heroes who have emerged so far.

Li Wenliang, MD, Chinese ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, who alerted Chinese authorities of a disease that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome, was initially censored, and died 6 weeks later of COVID-19.

Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has calmly led the US through this pandemic, with experience and intelligence, and who has tried mightily to reassure a worried nation, with science and utmost professionalism.

Maurizio Cecconi, MD, head of the Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Department of Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, Italy, who looked into a camera, told the story of the early days in Lombardy, Italy, and galvanized the world to prepare for the tsunami of COVID-19 disease to come.

Millions of health care workers—physicians, nurses, technicians, other health care professionals, and hospital support staff, as well as first responders including emergency rescue personnel, law enforcement officers, and others who provide essential services and products—around the world have faced the challenge of providing care for patients with COVID-19, while often ill-equipped and poorly prepared, risking their own lives to save the lives of others. They honor us all with their commitment, dedication, and professionalism.

JAMA and the JAMA Network salute and sincerely thank the countless heroes of this pandemic.

Published Online: April 20, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.6197

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

  • Sara Cody, MD, Santa Clara County Health Officer and 
  • Nancy Rosenstein Messonnier, MD, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

1. Bauchner H, Fontanarosa PB, Livingston EH. Conserving Supply of Personal Protective Equipment—A Call for Ideas. JAMA. Published online March 20, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4770

See More About

Bauchner H , Easley TJ , on behalf of the entire editorial and publishing staff of JAMA and the JAMA Network. Health Care Heroes of the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA. 2020;323(20):2021. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.6197

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[OPINION] Who are the real-life heroes in the time of COVID-19?

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[OPINION] Who are the real-life heroes in the time of COVID-19?

On World Humanitarian Day (WHD), 19 August, we celebrate and honor frontline workers, who, despite the risks, continue to provide life-saving support and protection to people most in need. On this day, we also commemorate humanitarians killed, harassed, and injured while performing their duty. This year’s theme is “Real-Life Heroes.”

But what does it mean to be a hero? What does it take to help those in need, the poor and at-risk communities, those who are most vulnerable when a disaster strikes? Why should we hold up as heroic the deeds of those who every day continue to extend a helping hand? 

As I write this, I am mourning the death of a UN colleague. He died last Friday, struck down by COVID-19, at the age of 32. As a team member of the UN’s Migration Agency, he showed exemplary dedication and commitment to the situation of migrants amid this pandemic. 

He was a true frontline hero, and he is not alone. 

In these extraordinary times, and despite the very real danger to themselves, Filipino frontline workers, like my fallen colleague, everyday put their own safety and well-being aside to provide life-saving support and protection to people most in need. 

Halsema Highroad Point dethroned as highest point in PH Highway System

Halsema Highroad Point dethroned as highest point in PH Highway System

In the Philippines, every day since the beginning of the year, humanitarian workers have stood on the front lines dealing with the challenges arising from COVID-19 and other disaster events, like the displacement from the Taal Volcano eruption, the damage wrought by Typhoon Ambo, as well as continuing relief efforts in Marawi City and responding to those affected by the Cotabato and Davao Del Sur earthquakes. Despite the many risks, humanitarians continue to do their work, diligently and selflessly providing assistance to those who need it most. 

Through years of responding to various emergencies and capitalizing on national expertise and capacity, the humanitarian community in the country has embraced a truly localized approach by recognizing what at-risk communities themselves can do in these challenging times. The private sector in the Philippines has also stepped up in sharing its resources and capabilities, joining with other humanitarian actors to support affected local governments and communities. 

As we give recognition to local real-life heroes, we also need to protect and keep them free from harassment, threats, intimidation and violence. Since 2003, some 4,961 humanitarians around the world have been killed, wounded, or abducted while carrying out their life-saving duties. In 2019 alone, the World Health Organization reported 1,009 attacks against health-care workers and facilities, resulting in 199 deaths and 628 injuries. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled an important number of vulnerabilities as well as exposed our weaknesses in preventing shocks. It has also shown that the magnitude of the challenge is exceeding the response capacity of any single partner or country. It represents, in fact, one of the most dramatic calls to work together. The success of this battle will greatly rely on our capacity to learn from experience and remain committed to the highest humanitarian values. Our real-life heroes are already giving the example. 

On 4 August, a revised version of the largest international humanitarian response plan in the country since Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 was released by the United Nations and humanitarian partners in the Philippines. Some 50 country-based UN and non-governmental partners are contributing to the response, bringing together national and international NGOs, faith-based organizations, as well as the private sector. 

COVID-19 might be today’s super-villain, but it does not deter our real-life heroes from doing their job and tirelessly working to find ways to combat the threat and eventually beat the invisible nemesis. We mourn the thousands who have lost their lives to the virus across the globe, including my colleague whom I have spoken of. 

At the same time, we join Filipinos in upholding – in the midst of great adversity – the tradition of celebrating the best of human kindness, generosity, social justice, human rights, solidarity, and Bayanihan spirit. We celebrate what makes our frontliners and humanitarians real-life heroes. We salute them for continuously putting their lives on the line, despite the risks and uncertainties. Their efforts must not be overlooked or forgotten. 

Mabuhay ang Real-life Heroes! Happy World Humanitarian Day! – Rappler.com

Gustavo Gonzalez is the United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in the Philippines 

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essay on real heroes of covid 19

Nurses on the front lines: A history of heroism from Florence Nightingale to coronavirus

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Dean of the Solomont School of Nursing, UMass Lowell

Disclosure statement

Leslie Neal-Boylan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Massachusetts provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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Nurses are heroes of the COVID-19 crisis. May 12 is International Nurses Day, which commemorates the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the first “professional nurse.” The World Health Organization also named this year the “ Year of the Nurse ” in honor of Nightingale’s 200th birthday.

To nurses everywhere, this day and this year have great significance. Nurses, who are being recognized as heroes, have long awaited recognition as health care professionals in their own right and not ancillary to physicians. It’s wonderful to be recognized now in the context of coronavirus, but nurses have always been at the forefront – during war, epidemics and other times of disaster.

I have been a nurse for 40 years and a nurse practitioner for 17 of those years. An active clinician, researcher, scholar and educator, I currently serve as dean of the Solomont School of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Throughout my career, nurses have typically been relegated to a secondary role, and if mentioned at all, we are described as assisting doctors. Nurses today are still asked why they didn’t become doctors instead. Aren’t we smart enough?

Many people don’t realize that nursing and doctoring are entirely different professions with different purposes. We are proud to work alongside doctors and other health professionals, but we have never worked behind them. Not all nurses work at the bedside, but we all touch the lives of patients.

Many nurses have doctoral degrees. They conduct research that advances the quality of patient care. Nurses change health care policy . For example, nurses play a significant role in health care reform and advise Congress on proposed health care rules and regulations. They also guide organizations regarding health care technology and care coordination and sit on executive boards of health care organizations. Nursing is both an art and a science.

The role of the nurse has evolved, but some things haven’t changed. Nurses have always cared for the sick, the well and the dying. We promote health and prevent illness. We interpret what is happening so that patients understand it. We are there for the entire patient experience from birth to old age, from wellness to illness, and throughout age and illness toward a peaceful and dignified death.

Our history provides many examples.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

In 1854, Florence Nightingale brought 38 volunteer nurses to care for soldiers during the Crimean War. The cause of the conflict focused on the rights of Christians in the Holy Land and involved Russia, the Ottoman Empire, France, Sardinia and the United Kingdom. Male nurses provided care as far back as the Knights Hospitaller in the 11th century. But prior to Nightingale’s involvement, male and female nurses consisted of untrained family members or soldiers who cared for the ill and infirm.

Nightingale was the first to organize nurses and provide standardized roles and responsibilities for the profession. As such, she is credited with founding modern professional nursing . She was also an expert statistician, collecting data on patients and what did and didn’t work to make them better . Nightingale and her nurses improved sanitation, hygiene and nutrition . They provided care and comfort. Their work had a major impact on the survival of soldiers.

The American Civil War in the 1860s brought thousands of trained nurses to the battlefront, risking their lives to care for soldiers on both sides of the conflict. The most famous were Dorothea Dix , an advocate for indigenous populations and the mentally ill; Clara Barton , founder of the American Red Cross; and Louisa May Alcott , the author of “Little Women.”

Nurses again answered the call with the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 , rushing from all over the country to Tennessee. The epidemic ultimately killed 18,000 people, and many nurses died while caring for the sick.

The U.S. recruited more than 22,000 trained nurses to treat Americans overseas and back at home from 1917 to 1919 during World War I. The war brought death from combat to about 53,000 Americans, while about 40 million civilians and military died worldwide. Time after time, nurses have left the warmth, comfort and safety of their homes to care for others.

Nurses were also among the millions who died from the 1918 influenza pandemic. Fifty million people died worldwide . This pandemic is probably most comparable to what we are experiencing today with COVID-19. But epidemics, such as polio, off and on from 1916 to 1954; the global pandemic of influenza A, 1957-1958; swine flu, 2009-2010; Ebola, 2014-2016; and Zika, 2015-2020, have also required constant nursing care.

I remember the AIDS pandemic, which began in 1981. I was a visiting nurse and saw many patients in their homes, from homeless shelters to penthouse apartments. Everyone suffered not only because of the physical and mental effects of the disease but also because of the stigma. People, even their families, were afraid to touch patients, kiss them or be near them. It was a lonely time for these patients. I watched them deteriorate and die. Nurses were often the only ones to hold the hands of these patients, so they wouldn’t die alone.

Nurses were also there during 9/11. They were among the courageous first responders who risked their lives to save others. Many have chronic diseases because of their exposure to Ground Zero .

Every year, nurses are voted first among the professions the public trusts the most, according to Gallup. We work hard to earn and maintain that trust. You will find us caring for people in their homes, in public health departments, in nursing homes and skilled care facilities, in rehabilitation hospitals, in prisons and correctional institutions, caring for the mentally ill and providing health care advice over phones and computers. Nurses work wherever there are people.

What do we ask in return? It’s simple. We don’t consider ourselves heroes, but we do deserve respect. Public images of the nurse in a sexy uniform or as a handmaiden to a doctor are wrong and insulting. We are professionals. Once the COVID-19 crisis is over, please don’t forget that we are always here for you. Always have been. Always will be.

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essay on real heroes of covid 19

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12 Photo Essays Highlight the Heroes and Heartaches of the Pandemic

Pictures piece together a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.

essay on real heroes of covid 19

Photos: One Year of Pandemic

Getty Images

A boy swims along the Yangtze river on June 30, 2020 in Wuhan, China.

A year has passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March, 11, 2020. A virus not visible to the human eye has left its mark in every corner of the world. No single image can define the loss and heartache of millions of global citizens, but photojournalists were there to document the times as best they could. From the exhaustion on the faces of frontline medical workers to vacant streets once bustling with life, here is a look back at photo essays published by U.S. News photo editors from the past year. When seen collectively, these galleries stitch together a year unlike any other.

In January of 2020, empty streets, protective masks and makeshift hospital beds became the new normal in Wuhan, a metropolis usually bustling with more people than New York City. Chinese authorities suspended flights, trains and public transportation, preventing locals from leaving the area, and placing a city of 11 million people under lockdown. The mass quarantine invokes surreal scenes and a grim forecast.

Photos: The Epicenter of Coronavirus

WUHAN, CHINA - JANUARY 31:  (CHINA OUT) A man wears a protective mask as he rides a bicycle across the Yangtze River Bridge on January 31, 2020 in Wuhan, China.  World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on January 30 that the novel coronavirus outbreak has become a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).  (Photo by Stringer/Getty Images)

Photojournalist Krisanne Johnson documented New Yorkers in early March of 2020, during moments of isolation as a climate of uncertainty and tension hung over the city that never sleeps.

Coronavirus in NYC Causes Uncertainty

A young man with flowers waits for the subway at theTimes Square-42nd Street Station as New Yorkers deal with the spread of the Coronavirus in Manhattan, NY on March 13, 2020.

For millions of Italians, and millions more around the globe, the confines of home became the new reality in fighting the spread of the coronavirus. Italian photojournalist Camila Ferrari offered a visual diary of intimacy within isolation.

Photos: Confined to Home in Milan

March 17, 2020 | Milan, Italy | Self portrait while working. During the day, the sun moves from one side of the apartment to the other, creating beautiful windows of light.

Around the world, we saw doctors, nurses and medical staff on the front lines in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Photos: Hospitals Fighting Coronavirus

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 24:  Doctors test hospital staff with flu-like symptoms for coronavirus (COVID-19) in set-up tents to triage possible COVID-19 patients outside before they enter the main Emergency department area at St. Barnabas hospital in the Bronx on March 24, 2020 in New York City. New York City has about a third of the nation’s confirmed coronavirus cases, making it the center of the outbreak in the United States. (Photo by Misha Friedman/Getty Images)

As the pandemic raged, global citizens found new ways of socializing and supporting each other. From dance classes to church services, the screen took center stage.

Photos: Staying Connected in Quarantine

NAPLES, ITALY - MARCH 13: Women during the 6pm flashmob on March 13, 2020 in Naples, Italy. The Italians met on the balconies of their homes in a sound flashmob that involved all the cities from north to south to gain strength and face the Coronavirus pandemic, reaffirming the importance of respecting government guidelines in this moment of great difficulty . In Naples in the San Ferdinando district some inhabitants of what are called in jargon "Vasci" (Bassi), small houses on the ground floor without balconies, obtained in the ancient cellars of the historic buildings, poured into the street intoning traditional Neapolitan songs with improvised tools with pots and other household utensils. (Photo by Ivan Romano/Getty Images)

In April of 2020, photographer John Moore captured behind the scene moments of medical workers providing emergency services to patients with COVID-19 symptoms in New York City and surrounding areas.

Photos: Paramedics on the Front Lines

YONKERS, NY - APRIL 06: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY)  Medics wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), intubate a gravely ill patient with COVID-19 symptoms at his home on April 06, 2020 in Yonkers, New York. The man, 92, was barely breathing when they arrived, and they performed a rapid sequence intubation (RSI), on him before transporting him by ambulance to St. John's Riverside Hospital. The medics (L-R) are Capt. AJ Briones (paramedic) and Michelle Melo (EMT). The Empress EMS employees treat and transport patients to hospitals throughout Westchester County and parts of New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.  (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted undocumented communities that often lack unemployment protections, health insurance and at times, fear deportation.

Photos: Migrants and the Coronavirus

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - MARCH 17: Venezuelan migrants dry their clothes and things on the grass on March 17, 2020 in Bogota, Colombia. According to official reports, 65 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed. Crossings to and from Venezuela were closed and travel from Europe and Asia was banned. Events of over 500 people are prohibited. (Photo by Ovidio Gonzalez/Getty Images)

Aerial views showed startlingly desolate landscapes and revealed the scale of the pandemic.

Photos: COVID-19 From Above

Aerial view of a few people still enjoying Arpoador beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 20, 2020 despite the request by the State Government to avoid going to the beach or any other public areas as a measure to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, COVID-19. - South America's biggest country Brazil on Thursday announced it was closing its land borders to nearly all its neighbours to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state also said it would bar people from its world famous beaches including Copacabana and Ipanema. (Photo by Mauro PIMENTEL / AFP) (Photo by MAURO PIMENTEL/AFP via Getty Images)

With devastating death tolls, COVID-19 altered the rituals of mourning loved ones.

Photos: Final Farewells

The family of Larry Hammond wave as a line of cars with friends and family, who could not attend his funeral due to the coronavirus, pass by their home, in New Orleans, Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Hammond was Mardi Gras royalty, and would have had more than a thousand people marching behind his casket in second-line parades. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In recognition of May Day in 2020, these portraits celebrated essential workers around the globe.

Photos: Essential Workers of the World

Renata Gajic, 45, who works at a supermarket, poses for a picture in Mladenovac, Serbia, on April 21, 2020 during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. - Ahead of May Day on May 1, 2020, AFP portrayed 55 workers defying the novel coronavirus around the world. Gajic is equipped with face masks and gloves by the supermarket and her work has not changed since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Vladimir Zivojinovic / AFP) (Photo by VLADIMIR ZIVOJINOVIC/AFP via Getty Images)

In May 2020, of the 10 counties with the highest death rates per capita in America, half were in rural southwest Georgia, where there are no packed apartment buildings or subways. And where you could see ambulances rushing along country roads, just fields and farms in either direction, carrying COVID-19 patients to the nearest hospital, which for some is an hour away.

Photos: In Rural Georgia, Devastation

Eddie Keith, 65, of Dawson, Ga., poses for a portrait outside of his church on Sunday, April 19, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. Keith lost his pastor to COVID-19. Keith has worked at Albritten's Funeral Service for around 35 years and was the person to retrieve his pastor. He felt like he'd lost a brother. "Why God? Why God? Why God?" Keith thought as he retrieved his pastor. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

In January of 2021, as new variants of the virus emerged, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and other vaccines led a historic global immunization rollout, offering hope.

Photos: COVID-19 Vaccinations

TOPSHOT - Health professional Raimunda Nonata, 70, is inoculated with the Sinovac Biotech's CoronaVac vaccine against COVID-19 inside her house becoming the first Quilombola (traditional Afro-descendent community member) to be vaccinated at the community Quilombo Marajupena, city of Cachoeira do Piria, Para state, Brazil, on January 19, 2021. - The community of Quilombo Marajupena, 260km far-away from Belem, capital of Para, doesn't have access to electricity. (Photo by TARSO SARRAF / AFP) (Photo by TARSO SARRAF/AFP via Getty Images)

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Tags: Coronavirus , public health , Photo Galleries , New York City , pandemic

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Beyond Duty: Medical “Heroes” and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Wendy lipworth.

Sydney Health Ethics, University of Sydney, Medical Foundation Building (K25), Sydney, NSW 2006 Australia

When infectious disease outbreaks strike, health facilities acquire labels such as “war zones” and “battlefields” and healthcare professionals become “heroes” on the “front line.” But unlike soldiers, healthcare professionals often take on these dangerous roles without any prior intention or explicit expectation that their work will place them in grave personal danger. This inevitably raises questions about their role-related obligations and whether they should be free to choose not to endanger themselves. In this article, I argue that it is helpful to view this situation not only through the lens of “professional duty” but also through the lens of “role-related conflicts.” Doing so has the advantage of avoiding exceptionalism and allowing us to draw lessons not only from previous epidemics but also from a wide range of far more common role-related dilemmas in healthcare.

Almost as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, a narrative about healthcare “heroes” appeared in the popular media. According to this narrative, healthcare workers (HCWs) are marching to the “frontline” in the “war” (McMillan 2020 , ¶2) against the virus and, in doing so, are putting themselves at considerable risk. These “heroic” HCWs have since been the subject of coordinated public applause (Hurst 2020 ), serenaded by famous singers (Chan 2020 ), and profiled in the media (Knapp 2020 ). Funds have been raised to demonstrate appreciation for their sacrifices (The Common Good 2020 ), lines of “Thank You Heroes” action figures (O’Kane 2020 ) and “health hero” stock photographs have been released (Shutterstock 2020 ), and it is even being predicted that statues will be erected in their honour (Lake 2020 ).

While some HCWs have expressed appreciation for these “signs of love from the community” (Gavin 2020 , ¶26) that “help us trudge on” (Kane 2020 , ¶31), others have begun to push back against the hero narrative. In some cases, this is because they don’t see themselves as heroes, because they are simply doing what they “have always done” ( KevinMD Blog 2020 , ¶1). In other cases it is because it is they associate heroism with lack of fear—and they are afraid (Lake 2020 ; Kane 2020 ). And in other cases, it is because they see the hero narrative as a means by which the public and politicians can assuage their guilt and feign appreciation despite acting for decades in ways that actively undermine health services, failing to prepare adequately for the pandemic, and, now, failing to engage in adequate social distancing and provide HCWs with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) (Darlow 2020 ; Miller 2020 ; Mathers and Kitchen 2020 ):

Private businesses and citizens are offering generous displays of public support for their doctors and nurses, cheering for them every evening, buying them dinner in hospital wards, and thanking them profusely for their service. But institutions, at the same time, are letting them down. (Khetpal 2020 , ¶10).

Indeed, for many HCWs, the shortage of PPE is not only seen a failure of society’s duty of care—“as if our government has condoned sending our front lines into battle without helmets or bullet-proof vests” (Guzzi 2020 , ¶4)—but also as a failure to reciprocate for the personal risks that HCWs are taking:

If health-care providers are going to risk their life, then there is a reciprocal obligation—the fairness principle —that society, employers and the hospitals keep them safe and ensure that they are fairly treated, whether they live, get sick, or die. (Kirsch 2020 , ¶21)

For some HCWs, the moral injury associated with lack of reciprocity has exacerbated their sense that they are being “bullied,” “shamed,” and “emotionally blackmailed” by hospital managers and government for demanding or allegedly misusing PPE (Child 2020 , ¶14; Hammond 2020 , ¶9). This appears particularly the case for non-physician HCWs, those from ethnic minority groups, and those working in less resourced areas, who already face disadvantages and inequities and have the sense that they are now being placed at disproportionately high risk (Covert 2020 ; Ford 2020 ). Similar concerns about reciprocity have emerged in discussions of reimbursement, with HCWs complaining about being asked to accept reduced hours or leave without pay (Maass 2020 ) and some medical students even being asked to work as “meat shields” without any pay at all (Khetpal 2020 , ¶10).

While HCWs frequently emphasize the strength of their calling to help and insist that they will push on despite the lack of PPE and other forms of reciprocity (Covert 2020 ; Guzzi 2020 ), concerns have begun to emerge that HCWs might begin to refuse to care for COVID-19 patients or leave the workforce altogether if they feel insufficiently respected and cared for (Bieman 2020 ; Jauhar 2020 ):

… a tipping point could happen with little warning. The loss of providers will come from many causes—quarantine, sickness, caring for their own family, cohorting—but it will be the creeping fear and feeling of abandonment that eats at us the most. (Kirsch 2020 , ¶31)

Indeed, there have already been cases of HCWs protesting and even striking over lack of adequate PPE and other perceived forms of mistreatment by governments or hospital administrators (Anadolu Agency 2020 ; Jeffery 2020 ).

The “Duty to Care” and its Limitations

Both the hero narrative and counter-calls for reciprocal protection reflect the major themes within the bioethics discourse on patient care during infectious disease outbreaks. This discourse focuses primarily on the moral bases of HCWs’ so called “duty to care,” including both general duties and virtues such as altruism, beneficence, non-abandonment, justice, and solidarity (Klopfenstein 2008 ; Vawter et al. 2008 ; Lowe, Hewlett, and Schonfeld 2020 ; Sawicki 2008 ) and more specific professional duties. The foundations of these specific moral duties (which, in this context, refer primarily to obligations to individuals or groups) have been variously framed in terms of HCWs’ status as healing professionals, their voluntary choice to enter risky occupations and professions, their obligation to repay society for its investment in their training and for the professional privileges they enjoy, and their special training which means that they are both the most skilled and the “safest” providers of care during infectious disease outbreaks (Clark 2005 ; Malm et al. 2008 ; Dawson 2016 ; Daniels 1991 ; Mareiniss 2008 ; Huber and Wynia 2004 ; Sawicki 2008 ).

It is, however, broadly recognized that HCWs have only a qualified duty to act during pandemics as a consequence of the magnitude of the risks that they face and the competing duties that they have to themselves, their families, and other (non-infected) patients (Bailey et al. 2008 ; Reiheld 2008 ; Malm et al. 2008 ; Sokol 2008 ; Dawson 2016 ). Many bioethicists also argue that HCWs have entered into a broad social contract that not only creates their duty to care but also places obligations on society to keep them as safe as possible and reward them for their sacrifices (Reid 2005 ; Joint Centre for Bioethics Pandemic Ethics Working Group 2008 ; Millar and Hsu 2019 ; Dawson 2016 ; Solano et al. 2015 ; Dwyer and Tsai 2008 ). In the context of COVID-19, ethicists have argued that, while there is a duty to care, this duty is context-specific (e.g., depending on the likelihood of a patient benefiting from care, the HCW’s training, and their personal health status) and holds only if there is adequate planning and reciprocity in the form of PPE, reasonable shift schedules, professional acknowledgement, financial compensation, social and psychological support, information and training, testing and monitoring, and (more controversially) protection from litigation and priority access to critical care (Schuklenk 2020 ; Dunn et al. 2020 ; Hick et al. 2020 ; British Columbia Ministry of Health 2020 ).

Beyond the Duty to Care

Such articulations of HCWs’ duties (and their limits) are important because they inform the design of systems and processes and justify limited incursions on HCWs’ choices. But there is evidence from the emerging COVID-19 discourse that abstract appeals to duty might not resonate with the intuitions that HCWs have about their reasons for doing the work they do:

… the hair stands up on the back of my neck when I hear ethicists, hospital administrators, and politicians, sitting in their safe offices, lecture me on my obligation to die providing health-care. We don’t take these risks because of an abstract “ethical duty”; we take them because it is what we do every time we walk into the chaos and danger of the emergency department. We do it because it is our job. (Kirsch 2020 , ¶18)

Another problem with appeals to duty is that they do not focus squarely enough on the moral and associated psychological conflicts that HCWs experience:

… this argument [about duty] seems to minimize the quandary my colleagues are facing as they try to balance their obligations as professionals with their duties as husbands, wives, parents and children. (Jauhar 2020 , ¶4)

While providing HCWs with PPE, assurances of care, and other act of reciprocity will no doubt go some of the way toward addressing such “quandaries,” it cannot eliminate all personal risk and, therefore, all conflict.

The question therefore arises: if moral conflict in infectious disease outbreaks cannot be completely managed—and might actually be exacerbated—by abstract appeals to a “duty to care,” how (else) might we think about and manage the moral conflicts experienced by HCWs during pandemics? In what follows, I will argue that useful lessons can be drawn from other situations in which HCWs’ obligations to their patients are in tension with personal desires or other obligations—that is, from other “role-related conflicts.”

Professional Roles and Role-Related Conflicts

Like all professionals, HCWs occupy a wide variety of roles, including those directly related to their occupation (e.g., carer, resource allocator, researcher, hospital employee, consultant, colleague, clinic owner). At the same time, HCWs also inevitably occupy a number of roles that are more peripherally related or unrelated to their healthcare work but which might impact on, or be impacted by, their HCW roles. These include being an equity holder in an external organization, an advocate for a personal belief or cause, a member of a community (e.g., recreational, political, or religious) organization and, of course, a family member, friend, and so on.

Each of the abovementioned roles and role-related activities is associated with a set of “interests.” While there is no simple agreed-upon definition of an interest, the term generally refers to the desires and obligations associated with a role or role-related activity (Komesaroff, Kerridge, and Lipworth 2019 ). Desires can be both financial and non-financial, and include the pursuit of material goods, as well as the desire to remain safe, to promote or enact one’s religious beliefs, or to achieve personal and professional status, while obligations can be to patients, healthcare systems, the general population, employers, or the research endeavour.

In most situations, interests coexist without obvious tension and may even support and reinforce each other. In these cases, one might be said to have a “duality” or “multiplicity” of interests. There are, however, situations in which acting on the desires or obligations associated with one role or role-related activity impedes one’s capacity or willingness to fulfil the obligations associated with another role. When this occurs, a “role-related conflict” (or “conflict of interest”) can be said to exist. While many role-related conflicts can be managed simply (e.g., through disclosure and recusal from particular activities) they may also sometimes be unacknowledged or difficult to manage, resulting in professional bias and harms to individuals, populations, organizations, and systems (Komesaroff, Kerridge, and Lipworth 2019 ).

When the conflict faced by HCWs during pandemics between protecting their own health and safety and providing patient care is placed in this context, it becomes clear that this is just one of many types of role-related conflicts in which interests compete or conflict. Other key examples of similar role-related conflicts include HCWs who wish to, or are expected to, consider macro resource allocation issues when caring for individual patients; HCWs who own, or hold shares in, clinics or healthcare companies; HCWs who are employed by, or consult to, private companies, government agencies, insurance companies, or patients’ employers; and HCWs who are engaged in both patient care and clinical research.

When the discourses surrounding these role-related conflicts are systematically examined, two things become evident: first, there are many different ways of thinking about the circumstances under which HCWs should, and should not, be permitted to attend to interests other than patient care (i.e., to deprioritize patient care); and second, there are many different practical strategies for managing the conflicts that arise between duties to patients and other competing desires and obligations. Many of these insights can be translated to the role-related conflicts that arise during infectious disease outbreaks.

Justifying the Deprioritization of Patient Care

As described above, the discourse surrounding the duty of HCWs to provide care during infectious disease outbreaks focuses primarily on the reasons that they might be seen to have such a duty, the factors that limit that duty, and the importance of reciprocity as part of the broad social contract in which the duty is situated. In this regard, discussions about the duties of HCWs in pandemics are no different to discussions of many other types of role-related conflicts in that these also focus squarely on the concept of duty and its qualifications. This is most obvious in discussions of conscientious objection, where HCWs’ freedom to act on their personal beliefs is challenged on the grounds that they have a duty to provide the full range of healthcare services (Curlin and Tollefsen 2019 ). The idea of duty also emerges as a counterpoint to the idea that HCWs should be free to consider macro-level resource allocation when deciding what interventions to offer their patients (Tilburt 2014 ), to recruit their own patients to clinical trials (Morain, Joffe, and Largent 2019 ), or to engage in private business activities (Humbyrd and Wynia 2019 ). All of these activities are discouraged, at least partly, on the grounds that they potentially conflict with HCWs’ (more important) duties to their patients.

While discourses about other role-related conflicts mirror the “duty to care” discourse to some extent by focusing squarely on the concept of duty, they also bring to light reasons other than duty itself for limiting HCWs’ autonomy and preventing them from acting on their competing interests. Some of these reasons are ontological—for example, it is argued that HCWs should not be free to act on their consciences because “conscience” is itself a problematic construct (Churchill 2019 ). Other reasons are epistemological—HCWs should not be free to act on competing interests because there are no sufficiently coherent grounds on which such actions can be justified and limits set (Sepper 2019 ; Tilburt 2014 ; Glover 2019 ). And others are consequentialist, the focus being on the effects of deprioritizing patient care on the image of medicine, on trust in HCWs, on patient welfare and population health, on social justice, and on the HCW–patient relationship itself (Abrams 1986 ; Sulmasy 1992 ; Magelssen, Le, and Supphellen 2019 ; Riggs and DeCamp 2014 ; Gostin 2019 ). Of course, there are complex relationships between duties and consequences, and some accounts of duty (e.g., rule deontology) position them primarily as routes to desirable consequences. But a consequentialist approach reminds us that consequences (and therefore the actions that produce them) can matter irrespective of whether a duty is believed to exist.

Focusing on the discussions that surround other kinds of role-related conflicts also reminds us that there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when deciding whether the duty to care for patients can be overridden in a particular context . These include not only the likely benefits and risks of acting in that particular context (Riggs and DeCamp 2014 ; Wicclair 2019 ; Morain, Joffe, and Largent 2019 ), but also whether the professionals involved have (other) conflicts of interest that are driving their behaviour (Wilfond and Porter 2019 ) and whether the action is justified publicly or privately on the basis of robust moral argumentation (Nussbaum 2019 ; McConnell and Card 2019 ). Discourses about other role-related conflicts also remind us of the possibility of “role morality,” in which HCWs adhere wholeheartedly to their primary obligations when engaged in patient care but satisfy other desires and obligations at other times (Tilburt 2014 ).

Some of these insights could be, but rarely are, applied to consideration of the issues surrounding the duties of HCWs during a pandemic. For example, beyond the obvious fact that patients will be neglected if HCWs refuse to care for them, there is currently little nuanced and systematic thinking about the harms and benefits of HCWs excusing themselves (partially and completely) from different kinds of caring activities during epidemics. There is also only passing mention of the need for clear professional standards (Clark 2005 ) and public justification of decisions to abstain from patient care (Joint Centre for Bioethics Pandemic Ethics Working Group 2008 ), and it is not at all clear what these standards and justificatory principles should be. In this regard, it is noteworthy that guidelines for HCWs caring for COVID-19 patients sometimes insist on HCWs having to provide robust and specific justification for their decisions (British Columbia Ministry of Health 2020 ; General Medical Council 2020 ) but do not fully articulate what would constitute a sufficient justification. More attention could also be paid to whether there are interests other than personal safety that are driving HCWs away from patient care (e.g., unreasonable financial expectations). And thought could be given to what “role morality” might look like in an epidemic context; for example, HCWs who remove themselves from patient care could be involved in other aspects of epidemic management.

Preventing and Managing Role-Related Conflicts

In addition to enriching our thinking about the circumstances under which HCWs might be justified in deprioritizing patient care, attention to other role-related conflicts can also provide practical guidance as to the strategies that can be put in place to manage role-related conflicts such as education, psychological support, disclosure, recusal, and harm minimization. Some of these practical conflict management strategies have been used in infectious disease outbreaks and are currently being used for COVID-19 workforce management. For example, efforts are already being made to limit the burden on HCWs by minimizing community transmission. Healthcare systems are already attempting to minimize the harms of recusal by redistributing HCWs and calling on volunteers. And HCWs are already being provided with education and (in most cases) with physical, social, and psychological support.

Translating strategies from other contexts to that of infectious disease outbreaks also brings to light new policy options. For example, more attention could be paid to training of HCWs (ideally in advance of life-or-death decision-making) so that they understand the nature of, rationale for, and limits to their professional obligations during epidemics. More systematic attention could also be paid to the kinds of psychological support they need—not only to manage the usual stressors of caring for very ill patients but also the distress that comes from being uncertain about whether they want to care for their patients at all. These issues are currently only hinted at in existing psychological guidelines. For example, guidelines recently produced by the British Psychological Association Covid19 Staff Wellbeing Group ( 2020 ) refer only obliquely and in passing to the “resentment” (Table 1 in BPA document) that HCWs might experience as a result of the risks and costs to themselves and their families. Finally, central registers could track how many HCWs recuse themselves (or plan to recuse themselves) from patient care, for what reasons, and with what effects on both the workers and their colleagues and patients. This monitoring could be both quantitative and qualitative so that nuanced reasons for recusal become clear and so that tailored measures can be put in place to address specific types and causes of moral conflict. This would also facilitate the kinds of justificatory process discussed above when HCWs are asked to explain why they have chosen to excuse themselves from patient care.

It is possible that there might be some resistance to the idea of placing HCWs who experience moral conflicts during epidemics in the same category as those who have other—more morally questionable—types of “conflict of interest.” It is important, however, that this anxiety is overcome, as taking a non-exceptionalist approach to this issue—in which the dilemma associated with the “duty to care” during epidemics is viewed as just one of the many other types of role-related conflicts that HCWs experience—may provide important conceptual and practical insights. While there are ongoing debates about how we should manage all types of role-related conflict, viewing them all as instances of a single phenomenon prevents us from starting from scratch with every instantiation and enables us to learn from other, at least partly analogous, situations. Whether or not one accepts this broader framing of the problem, it is clear that referring to health workers as heroes is neither necessary nor sufficient for managing their role-related conflicts during epidemics and the notion of reciprocal social duty does not, on its own, fill the gap.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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  • Volume 46, Issue 8
  • ‘Healthcare Heroes’: problems with media focus on heroism from healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic
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  • http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9416-9509 Caitríona L Cox
  • The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute , Cambridge CB2 0AH , UK
  • Correspondence to Dr Caitríona L Cox, The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute, Cambridge CB2 0AH, UK; caitriona.cox{at}nhs.net

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media have repeatedly praised healthcare workers for their ‘heroic’ work. Although this gratitude is undoubtedly appreciated by many, we must be cautious about overuse of the term ‘hero’ in such discussions. The challenges currently faced by healthcare workers are substantially greater than those encountered in their normal work, and it is understandable that the language of heroism has been evoked to praise them for their actions. Yet such language can have potentially negative consequences. Here, I examine what heroism is and why it is being applied to the healthcare workers currently, before outlining some of the problems associated with the heroism narrative currently being employed by the media. Healthcare workers have a clear and limited duty to treat during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be grounded in a broad social contract and is strongly associated with certain reciprocal duties that society has towards healthcare workers. I argue that the heroism narrative can be damaging, as it stifles meaningful discussion about what the limits of this duty to treat are. It fails to acknowledge the importance of reciprocity, and through its implication that all healthcare workers have to be heroic, it can have negative psychological effects on workers themselves. I conclude that rather than invoking the language of heroism to praise healthcare workers, we should examine, as a society, what duties healthcare workers have to work in this pandemic, and how we can support them in fulfilling these.

  • clinical ethics
  • applied and professional ethics
  • journalism/mass media

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Introduction

In recent weeks praise for ‘Healthcare Heroes’ has been plentiful in the media, with The Mirror even launching a campaign for all healthcare workers to receive a medal for their work. 1 2 Although this gratitude is undoubtedly appreciated by many, we must be cautious about overuse of the term ‘hero’ in such discussions.

The challenges faced by healthcare workers in the current pandemic are substantially greater than those encountered in their normal work, and it is understandable that the language of heroism has been evoked to praise them for their actions. Yet such language can have potentially negative consequences.

The question of what is expected of healthcare workers in a pandemic—in particular with regard to what level of personal risk they should shoulder—is a complex one. Hollow dependence on the narrative of healthcare workers as ‘heroes’ oversimplifies the issue, providing a potentially damaging and morally vacuous evaluation of an important topic. Here, I will examine what heroism is and why it is being applied to the healthcare workers in the present situation, before outlining some of the problems associated with the heroism narrative currently being employed by the media.

What is heroism?

The term hero is widely used and has been applied to a range of fictional and real figures, and consequently it is difficult to reach a precise definition that adequately reflects its common usage. A number of elements have been proposed as necessary for actions to be considered heroic. 3

Since Urmson’s 1958 seminal paper, most accounts consider heroic actions to be supererogatory. 4 5 Supererogatory actions are morally excellent actions that go beyond the duty of the agent: they are actions which are good, but not strictly required. 6 Supporters of the concept of supererogation have used a ‘two-tier’ model of ethical guidance for action to differentiate what one must do (the obligatory) and what one can only be encouraged to do (the supererogatory). 5

Although all heroic actions are supererogatory, not all supererogatory actions are necessarily heroic. Other elements are generally required to make an action heroic, which help to set heroism apart from other prosocial activities, such as giving money to charity (which are altruistic, not heroic). 3 Heroism typically involves a voluntary engagement with an acknowledged degree of personal risk to help others. 3 The risk does not have to involve physical peril, but may involve ‘personal sacrifice in other dimensions of life’, such as serious financial consequences or loss of social status. 3 Both having the choice to act in a certain way and recognising the possible risks/costs are important—someone who has been forced into acting, or acts blithely without any awareness of the hazard, does not act heroically.

A full discussion of the moral and ethical status of heroism, and indeed the philosophical debate surrounding supererogation, is beyond the scope of this paper. For now, let us consider heroic actions to be voluntary prosocial actions, associated with an acknowledged degree of personal risk, which transcend the duty of the agent.

Heroism in the current pandemic

Even outside of a pandemic, there are ways in which the normal actions of healthcare workers could fit the above description of heroism. Healthcare workers voluntarily act to help others in the face of recognised personal risk when they are routinely exposed to infectious diseases in a variety of settings. An accident and emergency nurse risks contracting hepatitis through a needlestick injury, while a physician might be exposed to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis as part of their work. These personal risks are an accepted part of working in certain healthcare roles, so are not encountered unknowingly. Healthcare workers doing their everyday jobs have not, however, been widely lauded as heroes in the media in recent years: these risks have largely been viewed as simply ‘part of the job’. What has changed in the current pandemic to prompt a sudden focus on heroism? Is there something substantially different about the act of working in the COVID-19 pandemic which justifies the change in narrative?

Several historical epidemics have given rise to work examining the duty of healthcare workers to treat patients in the face of personal risk. In particular, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s resulted in robust debates regarding the grounding and extent of a physician’s duty of care to patients. 7 8 Later, the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak further demonstrated the need to explore conflicts between professional and personal obligations. 9–12 Most of these discussions concerning risk and obligation focused on the concept of ‘duty of care’, or ‘duty to treat’, weighing up the risk to individual healthcare workers against their duty to their patients.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the risks to healthcare workers are appreciably greater than those encountered in normal practice. In addition to risk of contracting the infection, other costs include ‘physical and mental exhaustion, the torment of difficult triage decisions, and the pain of losing patients and colleagues’. 13 The emotional cost of having to live away from vulnerable family members for extended periods of time while working has also been acknowledged. We might thus argue that although some personal risk is inherent in working in healthcare, these risks are so amplified currently that descriptions of heroism are justified. Moreover, the advice for the public to stay at home to protect themselves contrasts sharply with the requirement for healthcare workers to continue attending work to care for patients, which has emphasised the concept of healthcare workers making a significant sacrifice by continuing to work. The widespread use of militaristic language in the coverage of the pandemic has further fostered the image of front-line staff acting heroically in the ‘battle’ against the virus.

It is thus not surprising that many have reached for the superlative ‘heroic’ in describing the actions of healthcare workers. Yet while these descriptions of ‘healthcare heroes’ may be superficially fitting, the continuing dominance of the hero narrative in the media is in several ways unhelpful.

Heroism stifles meaningful discussion about the duty of care and its limits

A significant problem with the dominant heroism narrative is that it stifles meaningful, and much needed, discussion about under what obligations healthcare workers have to work. The question of what can reasonably be expected of healthcare workers in a pandemic is best addressed through an examination of their duty of care, including what grounds it and what its limits are. Media focus on heroism does not afford sufficient examination of these questions.

It is uncontroversial to state that healthcare professionals have a duty of care to their patients. This duty of care is a ‘special’ positive moral duty, which arises from the relationship between the healthcare worker and the patient. 14 Special duties have two key characteristics: (1) typically they are role related, and are signified by an overt acceptance of the duty, and (2) they can obligate people to incur greater risk in performing the duty than we might expect others to. 14 Yet the duty of care is neither limitless nor fixed. 15 Sokol has been particularly critical of the concept of duty of care, noting that ‘in the medical context, is often invoked as a sort of quasi-biblical commandment, akin to “do not lie” or “do not murder”.’ 16 While it is intuitively appealing to rely on duty of care to justify what healthcare workers should be expected to do during pandemics, the phrase alone is too nebulous to be useful: relying on it can be ‘ethically dangerous by giving the illusion of legitimate moral justification’. 16 If we accept that healthcare workers have a special positive duty to treat patients of emerging infectious disease, even at some personal risk—a ‘duty to treat’—we must critically examine both what grounds this duty and what its limits are.

Grounding the duty to treat has proved challenging: ‘a solid ethical basis for the health professional’s duty to treat victims of… infectious disease, even at some level of personal risk, has proved elusive’. 17 A number of different accounts have attempted to describe the basis for the duty to treat, the most compelling of which are social contract models. 14 According to these models, healthcare workers have a duty to treat which is grounded in a social contract, the result of a ‘negotiation between the medical profession and the community at large’. 17 Healthcare workers have access to certain privileges as a result of their position in society (such as financial renumeration, relative self-regulation, trust and admiration from laypeople) and in return they have a duty to treat which may entail accepting a degree of personal risk. 14 17–19 Clark argues that healthcare professionals who enjoy such benefits, but do not fulfil their duty to treat, are essentially ‘free riders’. 18

Narrow social contract models, which focus exclusively on the contract between doctors and society (and thus exclude non-professional but essential health workers), have been criticised for being too limited to adequately address the response required by the healthcare sector as a whole to a pandemic. 12 Reid argues that attempts to ground the duty to treat should address the broader question of what sort of society we want to live in, a question which cannot be viewed as a simple negotiation between any one professional group and a community. 12 In asking, whether we would ‘prefer to live in a society that provides healthcare to people with infectious disease… or in a society that practices a form of quarantining of the ill without treatment, leaving them to die in isolation’, Reid recognises a broader social contract which is applicable to all those involved in healthcare, not just doctors. 12

It is clear that the duty to treat is not limitless. Healthcare workers are not duty bound to do absolutely everything in their power to benefit their patients at any level of personal risk: for example, as Sokol points out, few would argue that doctors are morally obligated to donate their kidney to a patient. 16 The idea that the duty to treat is limited, even in the current pandemic, is evidenced by the fact that healthcare workers with medical conditions which make them higher risk for suffering serious COVID-19-related disease have been advised to avoid patient-facing roles. For these healthcare workers, working with patients would thus represent an unacceptable level of personal risk, and would exceed what is required by the duty to treat.

Defining the limits of the duty to treat is a ‘daunting task, strewn with philosophical and logistical difficulties’. 16 Indeed, one working group concluded that they ‘could not reach consensus on the issue… particularly regarding the extent to which healthcare workers are obligated to risk their lives’. 11 If the duty to treat is most firmly grounded in a broad social contract between healthcare workers and society, consensus on what degree of personal risk should be undertaken in different circumstances must come from robust discussion between different stakeholders in society. A crude narrative which focuses on all healthcare workers as heroes stifles such discussion, as it does not properly recognise that the duty to treat is limited.

The importance of acknowledging reciprocity

Reciprocity is of significant importance to social contract theories: in return for accepting personal risk in fulfilling their duty to treat, healthcare workers expect reciprocal social obligations. Healthcare institutions are obligated to support workers and acknowledge their work in difficult conditions. The need to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to minimise risk of illness among healthcare workers has been highlighted by a number of authors. 9–11 15 20 Other proposed reciprocal duties that healthcare institutions have to their employees include clear communication regarding expectations and risks involved; adequate support, training and resources to perform their duties; counselling and psychological support; support and compensation for their families if they die; and access to treatment or vaccination if it becomes available. 15 17 20 21 The general public, who must play a role in supporting the healthcare system, ‘both during an epidemic and in times where there is no crisis’, also have reciprocal obligations. 12 Reid notes that the public play a role in supporting a healthcare system when they pay taxes or vote for governments that support the healthcare system. 12 In times of pandemic, the public also fulfil their obligations to healthcare workers by following public health guidance—for example, by adhering to social distancing measures, or by taking actions to minimise the spread of infection such as covering their mouth when coughing.

A public narrative that concentrates on individual heroism fundamentally fails to acknowledge the importance of reciprocity. Individual heroism does not provide a firm basis on which to build a systematic response to a pandemic: there must be recognition of the responsibilities of healthcare institutions and the general public. In the current pandemic, issues have been repeatedly raised regarding the availability of PPE for healthcare workers. 22 The requirement for employers to provide PPE to minimise the risk to healthcare workers is reflected by the attitudes of workers themselves—97.2% of healthcare workers in one study agreed that their employer was responsible for offering PPE. 23 Media coverage which praises heroism among healthcare workers diverts attention away from the critical importance of ensuring that reciprocal social obligations to healthcare workers are fulfilled; as Reid notes, ‘the obligation to noble self-sacrifice seems incompatible with insisting on proper protective equipment.’ 12 It has been noted that during the SARS epidemic, the hero narrative proved a politically convenient tool for deflecting attention away from governmental errors: ‘by calling health professionals “heroes”, policy makers in government wanted to escape from their guilt of policy mistakes.’ 9 Indeed, a response based on individual supererogatory action neglects the responsibility that the government and healthcare institutions have in supporting workers, and in creating and maintaining the systems required to deliver healthcare. The hero narrative fails to remind the public and healthcare institutions of their own moral duties, as in its focus on individual healthcare workers’ selfless sacrifice it does not recognise that their duty to treat is irrevocably tied to reciprocal societal obligations.

Negative impact on healthcare workers

The overuse of the concept of heroism in the media could also have a negative psychological impact on healthcare workers themselves, through the implication that all healthcare workers have to be heroic. We are, by definition, not obliged to perform supererogatory acts; as Singer et al 11 note, it seems ‘unreasonable to demand… heroism as the norm’. 11 There is thus a fundamental problem in describing all healthcare workers as heroic. We cannot ask all healthcare workers who go to work to accept personal risk beyond what is reasonably expected of them, as it is simply too demanding; we cannot, in short, expect heroism.

It is important to acknowledge that some healthcare workers may feel that the level of personal risk that they are currently being expected to accept in working is beyond what they ‘signed up’ to. Empirical data on healthcare workers’ attitudes to personal risk and duty reflect the fact that not every worker feels comfortable with accepting such risk; an American study found that only 55% of physicians agreed that ‘physicians have an obligation to care for patients in epidemics even if doing so endangers the physician’s health’, while a British study reported that 26.0% of healthcare workers disagreed that ‘All HCWs have a duty to work, even if high risks involved’. 23 24 In modern healthcare, the risk of exposure to infectious disease is not ubiquitous, and healthcare workers in certain roles may argue that significant occupational exposure to pathogens is not an integral part of their normal job. 14 23 As ‘the risks of treating infectious diseases are simply not obvious in or central to some fields in the way that the risk of fighting fires is obvious in and central to the field of firefighting’, we cannot assume that all those working in healthcare were prepared for the high levels of personal risk that might be incurred through working in a pandemic. 14 The heroism narrative leaves little room for acknowledgement of emotions such as fear or confliction regarding contradictory duties.

Fear and anxiety among healthcare workers who are facing personal risk must be acknowledged and addressed. This might be facilitated by moving away from labelling all healthcare workers as ‘heroes’—which places pressure on them to act in ways which are beyond reasonable expectation—and towards a discussion about what expectations are reasonable within a social contract model. The fact that healthcare professionals themselves have expressed discomfort with being labelled as ‘heroes’ further emphasises that the media’s use of the term can have a negative impact on those it is being bestowed on. 25

Recognising the difficult and incredibly valuable work performed by healthcare workers during the current COVID-19 pandemic is an important part of society’s response to it. We should, however, strive to do this without invoking the language of heroism, which emphasises ideas about self-sacrifice but does not adequately recognise the importance of reciprocity, or that there are limits to the levels of personal risk that we can expect healthcare workers to shoulder. Although the concept of individual heroism is appealing, its use could also have negative psychological consequences for healthcare workers themselves.

There have undoubtedly been many individual acts of heroism from healthcare workers in recent weeks and months, and I do not wish to devalue these; rather, I argue that we should be cautious about centring the narrative on heroism. Healthcare workers have a clear and limited duty to treat during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be grounded in a broad social contract and is strongly associated with certain reciprocal duties that society has towards healthcare workers. This model of duties and reciprocal obligations is likely to be helpful in guiding our response to the pandemic. Rather than praising all healthcare workers as heroes and clapping them every Thursday, we need to critically examine, as a society, what duties we think healthcare workers have to work in this pandemic, what the reasonable limits to these duties are and how we can reciprocally support them.

Acknowledgments

CLC thanks Dr Zoe Fritz for providing helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.

  • Clap for our Carers
  • ↵ Selfless and exhausted - why NHS heroes deserve medals as coronavirus fight is laid bare - Mirror Online . Available: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/selfless-exhausted-nhs-heroes-deserve-21769301 [Accessed 1 Jun 2020 ].
  • Franco ZE ,
  • Zimbardo PG
  • Singer PA et al
  • Francis LP , et al
  • Simonds AK ,
  • Orentlicher D
  • ↵ Doctors lacking PPE ‘bullied’ into treating Covid-19 patients | World news | The Guardian . Available: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/nhs-doctors-lacking-ppe-bullied-into-treating-covid-19-patients [Accessed 11 Apr 2020 ].
  • Wilson S , et al
  • Alexander GC ,
  • ↵ Why we shouldn’t be calling our healthcare workers ‘heroes’ | Charlotte Higgins | Opinion | The Guardian . Available: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/27/healthcare-workers-heros-language-heroism [Accessed 1 Jun 2020 ].

Contributors CLC is the sole contributor to the work.

Funding The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute at the University of Cambridge is funded by The Health Foundation.

Competing interests None declared.

Patient consent for publication Not required.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Data availability statement There are no data in this work

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In This Heroes’ Tale, Real People Risk Their Lives to Get to Europe

Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated feature “Io Capitano” dramatizes the harrowing journeys made by thousands of Africans each month looking for a better life in Europe.

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A small line of people walks across a hilly desert in bright sunshine.

By Elisabetta Povoledo

Reporting from Rome

At the end of “Io Capitano” (“I Captain”) , Matteo Garrone’s harrowing contender for best international film at next month’s Academy Awards, a map tracks the journey taken by the film’s two teenage protagonists: over 3,500 miles from Dakar, Senegal, to Sicily, via the scorching Nigerien desert, horrific Libyan prisons and a nerve-racking Mediterranean crossing aboard a rickety vessel.

Such perilous voyages, taken each year by countless Africans seeking a new life in Europe, is “one of the great dramas of our times,” Garrone said in a recent interview, and “Io Capitano” is framed as an epic, modern-day Odyssey, with protagonists no less valiant than Homer’s hero.

“It’s a journey that’s an archetype so that anyone can identify with it,” said Garrone, who is best known to international audiences for the hyper-realistic 2008 drama “ Gomorrah ” and his dark and fantastical “Pinocchio” (2019).

“Io Capitano” is also, he said, a “document of contemporary history.” This month alone, over 2,000 people reached European shores by crossing the Mediterranean, while at least 74 died, bringing the number of people who have gone missing in that sea in the last decade to more than 29,000, according to the International Organization for Migration , a United Nations agency.

Many Europeans learn of these landings, and deaths, from short news segments, often accompanied by clips of lawmakers pledging to stop illegal migration. Garrone’s film, which won the Silver Lion for best directing at last year’s Venice Film Festival, goes beyond the statistics with a plot based on stories of real people crossing the Mediterranean.

Garrone, who lives in Rome, said he had been inspired to write “Io Capitano” several years ago after visiting a Sicilian center that assists minors and hearing the story of Fofana Amara, a man from Guinea who was only 15 when — unable to swim and with no nautical experience — traffickers in Libya compelled him to pilot a dilapidated ship carrying 250 people to the Sicilian port of Augusta.

As the vessel neared Sicily, Amara recalled, a helicopter passed overhead and he began screaming to get its attention. After being rescued, he was arrested as the ship’s captain and spent two months in prison before being released, given that he was a minor. He was given two years on parole.

Hearing Amara’s tale, Garrone said, he “immediately thought of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Joseph Conrad.”

In the film, Amara’s story is told through the character of Seydou, who leaves Senegal with his cousin Moussa, driven by youthful enthusiasm and the prospect of musical fame in Europe. After a series of calamities and setbacks, Seydou is forced to captain a ship of migrants across the rough Mediterranean, despite never having sailed before.

In a recent interview, Amara said he hoped the film would help viewers “understand what we go through.” It’s now been 10 years since Amara made his trip, and he said it was painful to see such dangerous, and often fatal, crossings still being made, and still being met with general indifference from the European public.

“People still come, people die, some make it, others don’t, some we don’t know their fate,” said Amara, who later trained as a skipper at a nautical academy and then moved to Belgium, where is waiting for his asylum request to be evaluated.

To write the script, Garrone spoke to dozens of others who had also made the Mediterranean crossing, including Mamadou Kouassi, whose story became another of the film’s principal narrative sources. Nearly two decades ago, Kouassi left the Ivory Coast at age 19 and embarked on a traumatic three-year odyssey through deserts, Libyan camps and a sea crossing in which three fellow passengers died.

“I call myself a survivor,” he said in an interview.

Speaking to audiences while promoting “Io Capitano,” Kouassi noted that people had been moved to tears by the film. “I say it’s not only my story, but the story of many people who undergo that tragedy to come to Europe,” he said in the interview, adding that some things he had witnessed were too gruesome to include in the script.

Kouassi now works in a city near Naples as a cultural mediator, helping newcomers from Africa and elsewhere navigate the ins and outs of a continent that is generally unwelcoming to them.

“It is human to want to travel,” Kouassi said. “People were made to move — no one can stop it. It’s like the sea: You can’t stop water from flowing.” That has particular resonance in Africa, the continent that has the world’s youngest population , with 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 30.

Garrone said that he hadn’t set out to make a political film, but that “Io Capitano” “inevitably became political” as it spoke to the belief that everyone should have the right to “freely move, to discover, to experience new worlds.” It was important for the director that the film’s protagonists aren’t leaving home because of war, famine or climate change, but instead go in the hope of a better future.

“Io Capitano” was shot in Senegal, Morocco and Sicily in 2022, and migrants worked on the crew and as extras, letting Garrone know when they felt the story didn’t ring true. “We know that cinema is a collective art form,” Garrone said. “In this case it is even more, because we really made it together.”

The director kept the film’s Senegalese lead actors, Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, in the dark about their characters’ destiny. He shot chronologically, and they weren’t given an advance script. “I wanted them to maintain a constant pressure without knowing whether or not they’d arrive in Italy,” he said.

For the actors, who were both teenagers during filming, it’s been a life-changing experience.

Fall said that while he hadn’t known anyone who made the Mediterranean crossing, he very much felt the “responsibility to be the voice of those who don’t have one,” he said. “It wasn’t easy.” Since shooting started, he has amassed over a million followers on TikTok, many of whom gush over his sense of style. “My dream is to see my own designs on the streets one day,” he added.

Sarr, who won an award for best young actor at last year’s Venice Film Festival, said that “Io Capitano” was “important for Africa, and for Senegal.” Although he hopes to continue acting, he said that, most of all, he wanted to become a professional soccer player.

Asked whether he hoped to pursue those dreams in Europe, he immediately responded: “Oh, yes.”

Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years. More about Elisabetta Povoledo

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The 96th academy awards will be presented on march 10 in los angeles..

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    Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the use of the term "hero" has been widespread. This is especially common in the context of healthcare workers and it is now unremarkable to see large banners on hospital exteriors that say "heroes work here". ... In this essay, I will examine three aspects of the social role of medicine exposed by the ...

  20. The Origins of Covid-19

    The Origins of Covid-19 It is worth examining the efforts to discover SARS-CoV-2's origins. But regardless of the origins of the virus, the global community can take steps to reduce future ...

  21. 'Healthcare Heroes': problems with media focus on heroism from

    Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media have repeatedly praised healthcare workers for their 'heroic' work. Although this gratitude is undoubtedly appreciated by many, we must be cautious about overuse of the term 'hero' in such discussions.

  22. Health Care Heroes of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

    2020. TLDR. This study used social listening technique to explore unfiltered public perceptions of the professionals involved in healthcare teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a naturalistic online setting, and to elaborate on the emotional reactions in response to an online social media post. Expand. 30.

  23. Uncertain SEIAR system dynamics modeling for improved ...

    The study investigates the significance of employing advanced systemic models in community health management, with a focus on COVID-19 as a respiratory virus. Through the development of a system dynamics model integrating an uncertain SEIAR model, our research addresses the critical issue of parameter uncertainty using Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) and Metropolis-Hastings (MH) algorithms. We ...

  24. In This Heroes' Tale, Real People Risk Their Lives to Get to Europe

    Matteo Garrone's Oscar-nominated feature "Io Capitano" dramatizes the harrowing journeys made by thousands of Africans each month looking for a better life in Europe.