UKHRUL, India – For as long as Shimray Wungreichon can recall, many of the people in her mountain town had little respect for the work she did.
“The job of a nurse is said to be noble, but in our part of the world it is interpreted differently,” said Wungreichon, a nurse in Ukhrul, a remote village in the northeastern state of Manipur. in India. “We are seen as a service profession. ”
Wungreichon was among the first of many Indian health workers to receive the vaccine on Saturday, opening a new chapter in the battle against the pandemic in the second toughest country in the world, which was severely damaged by a virus that killed more than 152,000 of its people.
“I’m very positive about it,” said Wungreichon, a 14-year-old nurse who described getting vaccinated as “normal”.
The 43-year-old man was stricken with the worst of the disease, which has devastated most of the country. But as so many health workers battled the virus at the very beginning, so did her life.
For the first three months, she could not plug her three children, for fear that she might give them the virus. Her parents were all about to spend 2020 living with her, but living with a nurse was too risky so they moved back to their hometown. And her anxiety was spinning with every coronavirus test she did.
For a while, she even became depressed and almost slept.
“This kind of fear has never been seen before. No one wants to die, ”said Wungreichon while working in the emergency department at the district hospital in Ukhrul, the only government-run medical facility serving a population of 180,000. “People have discovered that life is precious.”
Indian authorities hope to give sightings to 300 million people, around the US population and several times larger than the existing inoculation program aimed at 26 million babies. Recipients include 30 million doctors, nurses and other face workers, with another 270 million people over the age of 50 or with illnesses that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.
Health officials have not specified what percentage of nearly 1.4 billion people in India the campaign will target. But experts say this is arguably the biggest campaign in the world.
But concerns about vaccination are a major concern. But Wungreichon is ready.
“As a health worker, this is a time when the world wants us to be involved,” she said.