On the front line, yet so ostracised

Yasmin Islam, a nurse at the surgery ward of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, received a call from her landlord while she was at work last week.

"If you go to the hospital, you can't come home for a month. And if you come home, you can't go to the hospital for a month," said her landlord from Babar Road in the capital, where Yasmin has been a tenant for one and a half years.

"The problem started when I went to the roof to hang some wet clothes to dry. A member of the landlord's family was there. She told me that I shouldn't come to the roof because I could be carrying the virus," Yasmin said.

She later asked her landlord to talk to the hospital director so that he could rest assured that she was not dealing with coronavirus patients, but he would not hear of it.

"It was heartbreaking, because the landlord's sister has cancer and I routinely nurse her for free as a good neighbour."

She has forcefully been going home each day since the day she was asked to leave, and a representative from a nurses' union called Shwadhinota Nurses Parishad spoke to her landlord.

But the landlord has been attempting to tar her character, by accusing her of going out too much. While the community might be sympathetic towards a healthcare employee living alone in the city, there are no feelings to spare for an unmarried girl who "goes out too much", Yasmin told The Daily Star.

Mustafizur Rahman, the central committee president of Shwadhinota Nurses' Parishad, said he was routinely getting complaints from nurses that they were being threatened with eviction.

"A nurse from Kuwait Moitree Hospital's ICU called me at 10:00pm last week. She was saying that her landlord was not letting her in," he said.

"She lives in Shewrapara, which is far from Kuwait Moitree Hospital. She could not even go back to the hospital. I had to call and beg the landlord to let her," said Rahman.

Sirajul Islam, a male nurse who lives in Chankharpool and works in the burn unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital, said he was asked to leave on March 26. "You deal with infected patients. So, you have to leave this house," he quoted his landlord as saying.

"The hospital administration had to call my landlord and explain to him that I worked at the burn unit… I am looking for other housing options at the moment," said Sirajul.

DMCH's isolation ward nurse Shiuly Khatun is in a similar situation in Banasree. "I have been living in this house for the last 10 years, but last week I was told that I might be infecting people in the building. I was asked to act according to my conscience," she said.

"I am feeling unsafe at work because we do not have N95 masks, and I am feeling unsafe at home because I might be infecting people and maybe they are justified in wanting me out of the house," she said.

The nurses have been mulling over the need for residential facilities in their hospitals.

DMCH Nurses' Association General Secretary Asaduzzaman Jewel has been looking after patients in the isolation ward.

"I had to go to into home quarantine because five of the patients I looked after turned out to be coronavirus positive. We did not wear N95 masks when dealing with them. Maybe I am infected and have infected other people," he said, adding that temporary residential facilities for nurses will be a good way to control infection.

Mujibur Rahman, head of the department of medicine at DMCH, said, "Patients with flu-like symptoms come to our hospital. Some of them later test positive for coronavirus but it is not possible for us to know from the get-go."

DMCH Director Brig Gen Dr Nasir Uddin said, "We are trying to arrange residential facilities for those who are working at the hospital."

Suhrawardy Hospital Director Uttam Kumar Barua also said officials were looking for residential facilities for nurses.