The global pandemic – Covid-19 – has caused an unforgettable dent on the international landscape by affecting millions of lives with major economies like the United States on its knees.
The country recently added more than 56,000 new coronavirus cases, including at least 15,000 in the state of Florida, pushing the nationwide total to 3.3 million cases, with more than 135,000 deaths.
In all this Zimbabwe has not been spared.
But within such a crisis there have emerged angels of hope in the form of health volunteers who have brought light at such a stressing time.
Trainee psychiatrist Dr Simba Mazorodze – who is a Covid-19 volunteer – with the City of Harare Rapid Response Team has been such a blessing. He is a firm believer in being the ‘change you wants to see’ in society.
His story of working with people in quarantine has brought courage and ease to patients, but for him pushing the boundaries has been a pleasure.
At one point had to assist a suspected Covid-19 patient who was pregnant to deliver in an ambulance due to a delay by a facility to take over the patient.
“One day I was called to assess one of the returnees who was quarantined at Queen Elizabeth Girls High School in Harare, and she was said to be bleeding. When I got there we realized that she was already in labour.
“We put on our usual protective clothing and assessed her and noticed that she was in advanced labour. Our job was to get the patient to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospital and we used the special Covid entrance.
“During that moment the labour progressed and we had to deliver the baby and it was an exciting moment because l am more into the psychiatric aspect and delivering a bouncing baby with no complications was an experience for me.”
Mazorodze said the desire to save lives when faced with a difficult situation at times overrides the fear of being infected.
“At times l get scared but when l help save a life it makes me happy. In this case these were two lives and we just had to be brave. Happily she was later admitted into Parirenyatwa after the delivery.”
On the psycho-social issues he highlighted that breaking the sad news of one’s positive status was a major challenge as it came along with a lot of grief.
“The major issue is breaking the bad news that one is Covid-19 positive. With a lot all the negative publicity on social media people have a negative picture about being positive and mostly someone will go through all the possible stages of grief and will have to support them through all those grieving stages.
“We assure them that it’s not all patients who get Covid-19 positive that needs a ventilator or advanced care. Most of them at this stage will be concerned about family and source of income among other things and have to assure them that all will be well,” he said.
The second experience he said was with the mentally unwell patients that come from foreign countries and are placed in quarantine.
“With foreign returnees quarantine can be a booster to wellness as far as the mental condition is concerned. So we try to manage them within the centers and come up with the diagnosis and if they need medication we prescribe.
The challenge in these centers at times is mental health. There is neex for a multi-team approach. As a psychologist it often requires a lot of time but at the same time you would not want to be exposed for a longtime so there must be a balance between providing the best standard of care for that patient and protecting yourself,” he added.
Such volunteers are the daily unsung heroes whose lives have become a cycle of putting on masks, changing gloves, hand sanitizing and trying to talk people through what is becoming an unending nightmare.