Had the COVID-19 pandemic not wreaked havoc, Benoy Pulimoottil Joseph would have currently been undergoing a bone marrow transplant as part of his treatment for blood cancer, which he was diagnosed with last September.
But, it was not to be. Instead, the 43-year-old from Kottayam, who has been working as a technician in Doha for the last nine years, was discharged from hospital and put on a flight back home along with his wife and sister, who had gone to donate bone marrow to her brother and whose visiting visa is about to expire. They are among the 183 evacuees from Doha on board Air India Express IX 476 scheduled to land at the Kochi airport on Sunday at 1.40 a.m.
“My treatment was in jeopardy following the outbreak of COVID-19. The medical supplies and blood donors for blood transfusion were in short supply. I was told that it was safe to return home for proper treatment as India produced many of the medicines I was prescribed, unlike Doha which is dependent on supplies from Europe that is also hit by the pandemic,” Mr. Joseph told The Hindu over phone from Doha.
Most evacuees had similar anxieties to share about getting stranded abroad during the pandemic.
After staring at uncertainty for more than a month, Vipinchandran from Kuttyadi in Kozhikode finally heaved a sigh of relief after getting booked on the flight along with his wife, who is six months pregnant, and three-year-old child. “My wife’s treatment was getting increasingly difficult and it was becoming clearer by the day that returning home was the safest option since nearly 1,000 cases were being reported in Qatar daily,” he said.
But Aneesh A.R. from Aluva did not have the relief of accompanying his pregnant wife Anjitha Babu as his company had frozen grant of leave till further notice. “There are many like me left to deal with the anxiety of having to send their wives back alone. As far as I know, there are nearly 100 pregnant women in that flight and many of them only have their little children for company,” he said.
As per the passenger list available with The Hindu , of the 183 passengers, 101 are women and at least 80 of them are below 40 years. There are 41 children aged below 10 years and four of them are below two years.
