Covid Heroes Steer Others To Hosp; Brakes On Own Use

New Delhi: For the past few months, the couple relentlessly worked to ensure that Covid patients and those suspected to be infected reached the hospital, providing them the ambulance they required to do so. But much before this, Twinkle Kalia had earned the sobriquet of Delhi’s Ambulance Woman — her husband, Himanshu Kalia, and she themselves drive two of their fleet of 10 private ambulances, come pandemic or a medical emergency. Their dedication to serving people was exemplified by their refusal to use their ambulances to take Twinkle to hospital when she was infected by the novel coronavirus, deeming it more important to have the vehicles serving needy patients.

- Pankhuri Yadav

Twinkle possibly caught the virus while driving patients to hospital or while at the hospitals or funeral grounds. “When an emergency hit our family, we could not get an ambulance in time,” said a wry Himanshu, fully conscious of the irony. “But our objective is to help people who need to immediately reach a hospital. The outbreak didn’t faze us, and Twinkle especially had zero apprehensions about driving corona infected people to hospitals.”

In the last four months, the Kalias helped over 350 patients. “Sometimes we even received phone calls requesting us to ferry bodies to crematoriums. Since these things take time, both of us spent many hours at hospitals and cremation areas, which left us prone to catching the infection,” revealed Himanshu.