The World Health Organisation (WHO) has paid glowing tributes to Kerala’s young nurse Lini Puthussery, who died of Nipah virus infection last month, after treating one of the patients. Lini died on May 21 after being infected by a patient, whom she treated initially at the Perambra Taluk hospital, where she was a nurse. In a tweet, WHO’s Health Workforce Director Jim Campbell said: “Remember them, lest we forget: Razan al-Najjar (Gaza); Lini Puthussery (India); Salome Karwah (Liberia). #WomeninGlobalHealth, #NotATarget.
The nurse, in a poignant letter scribbled from her deathbed to her husband Sajeesh, had said ‘..am almost on the way. I don’t think I can meet you again....” The letter had evoked an emotional response from across the world after it went viral on the social media.
The Kerala government has offered her husband a government job and financial assistance of ₹10 lakh each to her sons aged five and two.
Razan al-Najjar, a 21-year-old paramedic, was shot dead, allegedly by Israeli soldiers on June 3 while trying to aid wounded protestors in Gaza.
Salome Karwah from Liberia, who was named by Time as ‘Person of the Year’ in 2014 for her work fighting Ebola in West Africa, died in February last year from childbirth complications in a hospital in Liberia after hospital staff allegedly refused to help her due to the stigma that still surrounds the disease.