Asia & Near East

A New Nurse, a New Virus: Combating COVID-19

A mere few months ago, 25-year-old nurse Chetna Sharma was dispatched to her first-ever posting as a community health officer at the Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Center (HWC) in rural Madhya Pradesh, India. As if figuring out how to serve 7,000-plus people living across six villages in central India wasn’t daunting enough, she also

Working Double Duty in India’s Fight Against COVID-19

Manipur, India—It’s 2:00 p.m. and Ranita Maibam pauses outside her house to rub her hands with hand sanitizer. She has just returned from a 10-hour shift tending to people in quarantine who have had close contact with COVID-19. Her quarantine duty, held at a school converted into an isolation unit, is in addition to her

From the Country Director’s Desk

Hope you are all well and safe! These are undoubtedly unprecedented times. We are dealing with, possibly, the worst pandemic of our lifetimes, forcing an abrupt paradigm shift in the way we live, work and interact with the world. It weighs heavy on my heart that by the time you receive this mail, the numbers