Over 1,000 citizens answered the call for volunteers issued by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), to assist exhausted and overburdened health care workers in caring for Covid-19 patients across management facilities in the Maldives.

HPA revealed that following the open call for volunteers, over 1,000 application forms had been received. The public health authority added that the call had been closed temporarily while they process the application forms submitted thus far.

While the Maldives is currently faced with an unprecedented fourth wave of Covid-19 infections, healthcare workers are faced with caring for thousands of patients due to the surge in infections, one year into a grueling pandemic that has already left them physically and mentally drained.

HPA had issued a call for volunteers to help in the care of Covid-positive patients, and to assist nurses in caring for patients by, among other thigs, helping provide food and oxygen. With the influx of volunteers, nurses and health workers will be given a much needed reprieve from caring for more than a dozen patients at a time over day-long shifts.

In closing the call for volunteers, HPA expressed tremendous gratitude for the over 1,000 volunteers that had submitted applications, in upholding a longstanding Maldivian tradition of having citizen volunteers rise up in times of crisis, such as during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2014 Male' Water Crisis.

HPA added that they had temporarily halted accepting applications while the current list was processed, following which citizen volunteers will be deployed at Covid-19 management facilities to relieve the burden on health workers.

In a press conference held earlier this week, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had stated that the only difficulty in caring for Covid-19 patients was a lack of human resources. Noting that the Maldives had appealed for assistance from neighboring Bangladesh and India, President Solih revealed that 40 doctors and 100 nurses would arrive in the country within the next month.

A number of health workers and medical students have been working at Covid management facilities across the country. 62 persons affiliated with the Ministry of Tourism hare now operating a call center in order to improve the services being provided to patients, alongside an additional call center operated by 31 persons in order facilitate contact between Covid-positive patients in facilities and their families. Further, a team of 20 from the Ministry of Gender have been working to provide psychosocial support to patients with Covid-19 at this time.