An Iranian nurse fights to save his city from coronavirus

MARIWAN, Iran—The woman waits anxiously curled up in a room in the atrium of the hospital, as if wanting to recede into the walls to get further away from the other patients. She coldly answers the questions of the overworked triage nurse:

"Age?"
"Forty-five."
"Are you pregnant?"
"Yes."
"Have you had contact with someone displaying symptoms of infection?"
"Yes."
"Are you displaying symptoms of infection?"
"Yes."

All that she wants is for the virus to pass over her and grant her the chance to become a mother, because she has just become pregnant after a long time trying.

The nurse turns away and enters another wing to sit. It's rare that he is able to take a break during the 17-hour shift he has been working.

"I sometimes hear them cry. When they cry, they make us cry, too."

Ramin Ahmedi is on the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus outbreak in his hometown, Mariwan, a small town in the Kurdish region in Iran's east.

For weeks, Iran has been devastated by the pandemic outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The country became the regional epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, with more than 2,000 dead and 27,000 people infected as of Wednesday — according to official statistics, that is.

Ahmedi, 43, who has been working in this hospital for 16 years now, is one of six nurses in Abu Ali Hospital in Mariwan treating coronavirus cases. All six of them have not gone home to their families in weeks.

"Since day one, we have not even walked out of this hospital. We are alone here. Until now, even Marwan health officials have not visited us," he added.

As the young nurse speaks, he convulses with a sudden dry cough that stops his breath for a few seconds, before clearing his throat.

Ahmedi is but a nurse, not a doctor. But he says that much of his job involves counseling people psychologically.

"This virus is new and very terrifying for people. When you inform someone that they have contracted the virus, they psychologically collapse, Ahmedi told Rudaw English. "They don't know what will happen to their body, to their community, and are isolated from everyone — so no one can visit to console them," he explained.

Ahmedi and his colleagues have opted not to return home in order to keep their families safe from any possible infection of the virus as they are in the middle of the battle against COVID-19.

The first case of the coronavirus was reported last month. That number has as of today risen to eight, according to the hospital officers.

Those are the ones they know of.

"There are many other people whose test results have not yet shown whether nor not they have contracted the virus," Ahmedi explains. "Unfortunately, two patients have died of the virus and the remaining six cases are still at the hospital," Ahmedi added.

The doctors in Mariwan say they have not yet faced any shortages of facemasks and gloves, and the number of cases has remained a steady stream.

Instead, they are providing a service to comfort those who come in panicked that they may have been infected, and shuttle them through the process of testing. More often than not, the results come back negative.

"Panic and depression are the main problems worrying the patients," Ahmedi says. "People ask us all the time about the news, wondering if any cure has been discovered – we just do our best to make them laugh, tell jokes, at least lessen some of their pain," Ahmedi sighs.

There is little to console the consoler, however. He has forgotten what his personality is really like under the dull, white clothing he wears nearly twenty-four hours a day. It's sweaty and uncomfortable. He can only seldom take breaks to eat or drink a sip of water, because each time he takes off protective gear, the paranoia also affects him.

During his breaks, Ahmedi worries about his two girls waiting for him at home. He has not seen his children in far too long, and the short reprieve of a moment to check the scarce Whatsapp messages they send him throughout the day will never be enough to satisfy how much he misses them.

"They call me begging to return home, and to take good care of myself," Ahmedi says. "I know my wife will take care of them the best she can. Still, I am worried about them, especially my little daughter who is five years old."

Ahmedi is not the only doctor making huge sacrifices in Iran's uphill battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. Two doctors died of the virus in hard-hit Gilan province, after spending weeks trying to save infected patients as they flooded into poorly-equipped emergency wards.

Medical practitioners and politicians begged the government to put the region on lockdown to contain the outbreak, but hard-liners insisted that popular shrines remain open to pilgrims, creating a petri dish ripe for the pandemic to spread from.

The government eventually took measures, announcing the temporary release of 70,000 prisoners from Iran’s jails to prevent the prison system becoming an incubator, and mobilizing the army to spray spray streets and religious sites with disinfectant.

The virus knows no boundaries of class, nation, status or ideology. It has claimed the lives of Iranians of all walks of life, and infected a range of people from military men to high-ranking government officials to hundreds more of the poor, elderly, and vulnerable.

Doctors and nurses have complained of a serious shortage of equipment and slow results from samples that must be sent to Tehran while patients wait in quarantine. Some of them die before their families hear of the results.

For now, Ahmedi is thinking only of the future - he is convinced he must work hard now, to prevent things from getting worse later.

"At the end of the call, all I can tell my family is, please stay at home, because if the situation continues like this, we will not be able to bear it."

Translation by Zhelwan Z. Wali
Edited by Shawn Carrié