HYDERABAD: As COVID-19 cases are on the rise, it’s the efforts of some of the driven individuals in remote corners of the State that has helped the government in containing the spread of the deadly virus.
One such individual is 40-year-old Waseema Begum, an Anganwadi teacher from Zaheerabad, who has taken upon herself the challenge of finding the missing primary contact of a positive patient, who attended the Markaz in Delhi, in Zaheerabad’s Fareed Nagar.
The Herculean task of finding the primary contact began on March 31 when six people who visited Markaz were found to have died of COVID-19 in the State. Panic spread in Zaheerabad as roughly 11 persons were found to have travelled to Delhi to attend Markaz. At Fareed Nagar, the situation turned especially worse as the sole traveller to Markaz tested positive and there was no Asha worker to track the contacts of the positive patient.“I got a call from the doctor in the area to find all the contacts of the Markaz attendee. We found all of them except one.
She was his domestic worker, who worked at his house till he was taken to the hospital. It was like a race against time. Tracking her house was crucial before she infected more in the slum,” recalls Waseema, who is a single mother of four children. Being the teacher in the area, she managed to use her contacts and traced the missing primary contact. But it was no easy task taking her to the hospital. “The domestic worker and others were hiding and refused to leave the house.
I counselled them saying I will not let any harm befall them and assured them that I would stay with them,” recounts Waseema. She spent the next one day outside their home ensuring no one met them until the ambulance arrived as there was a strong resistance from the fellow slum-dwellers. They complained that she was only troubling the poor. While the primary contact has been kept under observation at a hospital, others have now been put under home isolation. “We have to monitor them till April 20. We do 12-hour shifts from 6 am to 6 pm to ensure that they have good food and do not meet anyone,” adds Waseema.