Some performed concerts, others convened to commemorate colleagues who died in the fight against the coronavirus. Most of them were working. Medicine Day, a Turkish version of National Doctors’ Day, was marked on Sunday in the country where fatigue looms over health care professionals one year after the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
“My dream is a life without PPEs,” Fatma Nur Koyunlu, a doctor in the northwestern province of Kırklareli, says, referring to personal protective equipment she has to wear due to the pandemic. Koyunlu is a member of a contact-tracing crew that monitors coronavirus patients at home and tracks down people who might have come into contact with them.
Throughout her daily shift, she barely removes her cumbersome, head-to-toe suit, the only protection against infection. “We are really tired, but we do not show it,” she told Anadolu Agency (AA). Along with contact tracing, she and others also work in vaccination since January, visiting remote villages, sometimes during heavy snowfall and sometimes by walking for hours to reach places inaccessible by vehicle. “I never complained despite all (except having to wear PPE). We get used to seeing children fleeing in fear when they see us. People are worried when they see us in their neighborhood, wondering who is infected,” she says.
“We cannot celebrate this day but it will be great if we can, but this will be possible only when there is no coronavirus patient left,” says nurse Nuray Türkeri who works at a hospital in the northwestern province of Edirne. Türkeri welcomed the day at the COVID-19 unit of the hospital, attending to patients fighting for their lives. “The only thing that makes us happy is seeing a patient recover. We are always with our citizens, and we fight alongside them. We will defeat the outbreak together,” she says.
