As the world faces a global pandemic, there are millions of people we all should be thanking including the doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who are on the front line of the war against COVID-19.
While many of us are trying to figure out how to stay away from people as much as possible to avoid illness, these folks are gearing up for battle and running into the fire. People who work in clinics, hospitals, and care facilities are the courageous heroes of this worldwide story, knowingly putting themselves at risk to save lives.
In China, it was a young physician, an opthamologist named Li Wenliang, who first sounded the alarm in Wuhan about the virus. He was also among the first wave of people to die from it. Liu Zhiming, a neurosurgeon who was the director of Wuhan's Wuchang Hospital and who led its coronavirus response, also succumbed to the virus. Doctors there have worked tirelessly to treat an outbreak of an illness that none of them had seen before, some dying of fatigue and exhaustion as well as the infection.
Doctors in current outbreak epicenters, such as northern Italy, are working round the clock as hospitals are overwhelmed with critically ill patients. In some places, they are having to choose which patients they will treat with the equipment they have, and which will be left to perish, a horrifying position to be put in, but reality when there are more patients than respirators.
Iran has announced that the country will designate medical staff who have died from COVID-19 as "martyrs," giving them the same honor as slain soldiers.
Nurses, who rarely get the recognition they should for the vital work they do already, are also making sacrifices above and beyond the call of duty.
Hospitals have not had any issues with staff not wanting to come in to work. "We've had staff calling and say, 'If you need me, I'm available.'"
Thankfully, we in our little town of Dumas, Arkansas have been fortunately not over-run by sickness due to the virus. However, the danger remains and our hospital, nurses, doctors, support staff, and administration bravely stand ready, and to do whatever they can for us, the citizens of this community.
Just as we praise soldiers, firefighters, and police officers for running toward danger, we should praise everyone working in medicine right now for what they are doing, or what they may soon have to do. They are the ones who have to face this threat head-on, being exposed far more than any of the rest of us, and saving those of us who fall critically ill from it.
Thank you, doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who are on the front lines of this pandemic. You are heroes daily anyway, but you deserve an extra dose of appreciation as we battle this new enemy.
![Ashley Anthony CEO Delta Memorial Hospital]()
