Nurse who left her boss to go to the front line in the pandemic is awarded in Germany

In mid-January 2021, the state of Amazonas was going through its worst moment in the Covid-19 pandemic, in which patients would die even from lack of oxygen. It was in this scenario that Mônica Batista Teixeira, manager of the state’s chronic diseases network, had to put aside the management work and return to her origins as a nurse, with the aim of saving lives.

Monica’s work has been recognized internationally. She was one of the winners of the “Heroines of Health” award, promoted by the international organization WGH (Women in Global Health). The award took place in October, during the World Health Summit in Berlin.

“Oncology prepared me, made me stronger, but I can categorically say that no health professional was ready or imagined living what we lived in the pandemic. It was all very difficult, it felt like I was in the middle of a shooting”, says the servant.

The 42-year-old Brazilian was awarded alongside 16 other health professionals from other countries who worked in various areas of medicine. The ceremony was attended by the Director-General of the WHO (World Health Organization), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and other authorities. Since its inception in 2017, the WGH has awarded 53 women healthcare professionals.

“I heard incredible reports from other women, I left there feeling great. They are women with stories very similar to mine. They are heads of families, who do not hesitate to leave their homes, taking risks to save other families. It’s magical.”

The server’s work was discovered by WGH through interviews at universities in the North region, the most affected by the pandemic. “A friend from Uninorte said that the NGO representative was looking for stories. He gave my name and that of three other co-workers. They asked for our reports and I was honored to have been chosen.”

Monica entered the public service in 2006. Since then, she has specialized in nursing in obstetrics, women’s health and oncology. She was working in the management area of ​​the Amazonas State Health Department, when she was summoned, along with other professionals, to assist in the work to combat Covid.

“We knew that at some point we would go to the front line, but we imagined it would be to the hospital. But we were informed that our health system had collapsed. So there was no other way out, the mission we had was to take patients to other states”, says the servant, who started to coordinate the work of preparing the planes that would transport the patients.

While Monica and the team prepared the plane, another group made up of doctors and social services was screening patients who would be transferred.

“At first we were going to take 70 patients to other states, but the mission lasted three months and we ended up taking almost 900. There were about 40 flights and we managed to save almost 90% of the people who wouldn’t have had the slightest chance if they had stayed in our state” , says Mônica, who came to travel on some flights.

“On the first flight I was there, but most of the time my job was to prepare the plane. When they said they had patients, we would go to the health units to get the equipment, we would assemble everything with the necessary material in case the patient had to be intubated or resuscitated. it.”

The worst part, according to the server, was when I lost a co-worker to Covid. “I couldn’t watch over a friend, help his wife. I didn’t have time to cry.”

Before the arrival of Covid, the server had already faced another complicated moment. In 2016, she lost her husband, Max Teixeira Júnior, to a heart attack at the age of 45. Since then, she has taken care of her daughter, now eight years old, alone.

On the eve of entering the front lines of the fight against Covid, she saw a 75-year-old uncle, her father’s brother, die from lack of oxygen. “He died because he didn’t have a respirator inside the hospital. Maybe if he had he could have survived. And it was inside the private network, imagine how the public network was at that moment.”

According to Monica, the fact of being a widow and having lost her uncle to the coronavirus increased the family’s concern. “When I found out about the mission and called my father, I heard his cry saying that I couldn’t do that, that my daughter had already lost her father”, says the servant.

“I couldn’t avoid it, I studied for that. I’m passionate about my profession. Every nurse in the state was either on the front line or was bedridden in the hospital.”

During work, he was away from his family for about three months, afraid of transmitting Covid. The contact was only visual, from afar, from the porch of the parents’ house. But she says the effort paid off.

“I say that I have a deal with God: every time I go to work, I say ‘my God, take care of mine and I’ll take care of yours’. And we always fulfilled our agreement well.”