Back in November 2019, after graduating from Medical school, I started working as a medical doctor at one of the biggest hospitals in the country. My journey so far has been quite an experience seeing a number of different cases from different specialties. 

Somewhere around Mid-April during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was practicing at the internal medicine ward and admitted a patient called Mohammed. (Patient details such as names may have been changed to maintain patient confidentiality). Mohammed was a 25-year old who weighed around 100kgs and had a single complain of general body weakness. After extensive blood workups and a chest X-ray which was normal, we diagnosed him with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The next morning, he developed fevers and his blood oxygen levels started suddenly dropping after which we had to put him on oxygen support to which he responded well. The same evening, his blood oxygen levels dropped further and we had to increase the amount of oxygen we were giving him. At this point, he was a strong suspect for COVID-19 and we transferred him to an isolation ward specifically for COVID-19 patients. He eventually tested positive for COVID-19 after 2 days. That was my first experience dealing with a COVID patient. I was quite concerned about being infected since I spent around 15 minutes doing an ECG on him but had worn all necessary PPEs. Although, I felt it would be wiser to move away from my family home to reduce the risk of exposure to them and moved to a small apartment since. 

In the next few days, my colleagues and I had regular shifts at the COVID wards which contained confirmed COVID-19 patients in one ward, suspected COVID-19 patients in the other and an isolated Intensive care unit (ICU) for the more severe cases. These few weeks were very exhausting as the wards were pretty full with no extra beds to take in more admissions. It was also the month of Ramadan and many of us had to do 12-hour shifts caring for 20+ patients while fasting. With help from other medical professionals like nurses, health attendants and specialists, we were responsible for full care including administering medications, drawing blood samples for investigations to checking on patients at least twice a day every day. Some of us even took nasopharyngeal swabs samples for the confirmatory COVID-19 test which was quite an experience. 

My time in the ICU was also quite an experience, we dealt with patients who had Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and required up to 60 litres of oxygen per minute. The next few weeks saw a significant rise in the number of suspects and confirmed cases in the hospital. 

I came to realise that even though COVID is more fatal in the elderly with comorbidities like diabetes and hypertension compared to young, healthy adults, there are still fatalities and severe cases among young, healthy people and there are also quite a few elderly with comorbidities who survived. We also had quite a few cases among the healthcare personnel working in the hospital due to the repeated regular exposure to COVID positive patients. 

Perhaps one of the most heart breaking aspects of this whole ordeal was how we would have to isolate patients away from their loved ones without the assurance that they will make it out alive. In some cases, the last time the patients saw their loved ones was just before admission, they never got a chance to speak to the families again. 

Thinking about life after COVID, there is always the possibility that COVID is here to stay. We might never eradicate it fully, but might just end up seeing it as a normal disease like any other. An example of this is HIV/AIDS which caused havoc when it started and is now seen as any other disease with specific treatment protocols in place. In all, the past few weeks have been extremely trying times for all of us especially health care professionals working on the frontline with the constant risk of infection, dealing with deaths and severely ill patients. 

Salute to healthcare personnel worldwide on the job well done! 

The author is a 25-year old medical doctor working in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania and Chief Medical Officer at LyfPlus limited.