Nepali residents at AIIMS in India treating COVID-19 patients without payment

COVID-19 has overwhelmed the health system across the globe. Sixty-five Nepali resident doctors in Delhi have been tirelessly treating COVID patients for over a year. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the premier medical institute of India, has been reluctant to recognize even our basic human rights. We have dependent families back home in Nepal but are sharing the workload of patient care amidst the raging COVID-19 crisis in India without an honorarium. We are among the frontline warriors in the fight against COVID, whether at the AIIMS COVID Emergency Area, COVID screening area or at the Intensive Care Unit. The immense delay and apathy toward providing financial security to those of us who are working away from our home country, has increased psychological stress over and above the financial crisis. Nearly all of us have been infected with the deadly disease, with a few needing oxygen support, and have had a hard time to recover. We are in India during a crisis, helping India recover, but are not being taken care of, neither by the Indian Health Ministry nor our own institute.

We have come to India for a post-graduate or doctoral level three-year residency training in MD/MCH/MDS/DM in many different specialities and super-specialities at AIIMS. But, because of the raging pandemic, we are bound to care for COVID patients only. This has significantly cut down our training duration. If we were to do the same training in the US or UK or any other premier institute anywhere in the globe, we would have been paid a basic living expense. There are three Institutes of National Importance (INIs) in India where foreign nationals come to complete residency after clearing the INI CET exam (Institute of National Importance Combined Entrance Test). Other two institutes--the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh and the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in Puducherry--pay foreign nationals for the work they do but AIIMS does not.