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No country in the EU has suffered more from the coronavirus than Italy.

Although Spain has surpassed it in total number of cases, Italy has had the highest death toll. Its economy is projected to shrink 11 percent this year compared to 8.3 percent for the EU as a whole.

The EU needs to help. And it has.

Italy has been the largest recipient of disinfectants, masks, medical gowns and ventilators donated by EU member states.

Germany, Poland and Slovenia have sent doctors. Austria and Germany took in coronavirus patients when Italian hospitals were overwhelmed.

Dutch researchers processed lung echos to quickly diagnose patients. The European Commission has suspended rules on state aid to allow the Italian government to underwrite up to 200bn in business loans.

The European Central Bank is pumping more than 1 trillion into the European economy in order to lower borrowing costs for businesses and governments.

This has provided immediate relief to Italy's banks, which are saddled with excessive levels of non-performing loans and government debt.

But when it comes to Italy's longer-term recovery, it's not unreasonable to ask it to make some changes to qualify for aid from a proposed 750bn EU fund.

Italy's economic problems didn't start with COVID-19.

The European Commission has advised it for years to invest more in education, improve the efficiency of its judicial system and simplify the tax code.

Year-after-year, Italy rejected that advice. It spends less on tertiary education than its neighbours. Only 27 percent of Italians in their thirties have a higher degree, the second-lowest rate in the eurozone, where the average is 40 percent. Tax evasion is between two and three times higher in Italy than in France, Germany and Spain.

Italy is one of the worst rich-countries to start and run a business in, and the time and effort it takes to enforce contracts and resolve bankruptcies in Italy's slow courts, where cases can drag on for years, is a major reason.

Poor availability of credit and excessive licensing requirements are two more.

For young Italians, it's almost impossible to start a career as a lawyer, notary, pharmacist or even a taxi driver unless they inherit a license from their parents or can buy one from a family friend.

These factors conspire to drive a lot of economic activity into the informal sector and deny young Italians job security. Just 45 percent of Italians under the age of 30 had a job before the pandemic, compared to a eurozone average of 63 percent. Nearly eight-out-of-ten of those could only find part-time work.

The current government, led by Giuseppe Conte, hasn't helped by passing a 20bn tax-evasion amnesty and overturning the labour reforms of the last centre-left government, which introduced a new type of permanent contract to close the gap between insecure part-time work without social benefits and impossible-to-break full-time contracts with generous benefits.

Even those reforms did not apply to anyone in work. At the insistence of the trade unions, they only applied to new contracts. Hence their short-term effect was limited, which Conte's government used as an excuse to cancel them.

Rather than tackle these problems, which would mean taking away some of the security and wealth of incumbents and the well-connected to give younger and entrepreneurial Italians a chance, Italy's politicians blame outsiders.

They accuse Europe of "abandoning" Italy in its hour of need and call on the EU to "take responsibility".

They said the same thing during the migrant crisis. And during the euro crisis. Italy is always the victim. Northern Europe, which would rather Italy took some responsibility for its problems before asking for help, is always at fault.

Conte insists he will not accept a "weak compromise" on the recovery fund. He argues conditions would "stigmatise" recipients and warns that, if Italy doesn't get what it wants, it would "destroy the common market."

But his government can't even tell what it would spend the money on.

One of the two ruling parties, the Democrats, wants to invest in infrastructure. The other, the Five Star Movement, argues for tax cuts.

Little wonder the leaders of Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are unwilling to sign off: they're not going to give money so the Italians can fund a tax cut in the middle of an economic crisis.

Yet it's them Italians blame, not their own leaders.

Years of blaming Brussels have turned Italians into one of the most Eurosceptic people in Europe. Just 38 percent told Eurobarometer last year they had faith in the EU.

Only the British, French and Greeks trusted the EU less. Italians were more likely than most to cite unemployment as the reason, even though that is still largely the preserve of national governments. 28-percent supported leaving the euro, the highest rate among eurozone nations. Italy is the only country in the EU where the young are more Eurosceptic than the old.

Italy's politicians are failing the next generation of Italians. They need to stop demonising the only countries that can - and will - help Italy and resist the temptation to enact more stop-gap measures that only perpetuate the inequalities and inefficiencies that hold the country back.

The rest is here:
Italy has a responsibility, too - EUobserver

Photojournalists are pivotal in telling a news story. Photos allow the reader to experience thefeelings a situation evokes first-hand. However,with the majority popularion equipped with asmartphone camera, professionals face a threat. Metrolife spoke to a range of photojournalists to discuss their relevance in a changing world.

Most people see life as a video, we see it as a collection of freeze frames, says Anantha Subramaniam, a photojournalist with 25 years of experience.

Approaching every event with the same level of curiosity and passion is important. You are there to capture interesting moments and pictures that hold the attention of the viewers, he says.

Samyukta Lakshmi, a freelance photojournalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Bloomberg, says authenticity is important. We dont just click a picture of whats happening; we inquire about the situation and try to understand why something is happening, she says.

Vaishnavi Suresh, documentary photographer and photojournalist, works with NGOs.

The focus is on documenting an event, area or situation for a long period of time and then working towards getting it published to bring attention to a certain cause, she says.

Subramaniam adds that intuition is a must. One never knows what will happen. But its our job to know, to anticipate situations and be ready with our finger on the shutter. I was once in Sri Lanka to cover a cricket match, but on the way to the stadium there was a bomb blast in front of me. I was able to stay focused and deliver the pictures, he explains.

Are journalistic ethics alwaysfollowed?There is a certain pressure from above that you cant ignore, but for certain things you have to put your foot down, says Subramaniam.

He explains how photojournalists are often asked to document the family of students who have died by suicide. We are asked to take pictures that capture their grief and sometimes even inquire for happy pictures of the student. That is something I refuse to do as I feel its disrespectful to the family, he says.

Samyukta says they can always take a photo and help the person after, but their consent is always important.

I know of photojournalists covering the migrant crisis who go up to the people and help them afterwards, either by providing them with more information or food and money. Most times you can do more by just getting their story out, she says.

Vaishnavi says she is aware of the gaze of the camera and the effect it has. I always try to take pictures of individuals at the eye-level, so as to not portray them as lesser than or greater than the viewer, she explains.

Cracking the field

For the past few years, newspapers have been asking for journalists with a certain educational qualification and a portfolio.

They should be able to write small reports, so courses that teach this are an added advantage. But with that being said, nothing can beat experience, I have no qualifications above Class 10, Subramaniam says.

He says that the field has become extremely competitive with smartphones coming into the picture.

Reporters, nowadays, feel like an image they click with a smartphone will suffice for their story. For us to survive, we constantly have to innovate and train the eye to see beyond the usual frames, he adds.

Vaishnavi does not think it is an easy field to break into; she doesnt think she has completely cracked it either. There are stories of people who slog for months and years as unpaid interns, but still dont get a job. Its even more difficult for women, she says.

Freelancing opportunities galore

Samyukta says being a freelancer does not mean you are less successful. One constantly has to hustle, but she enjoys it more than being a staff photographer. While there is a higher risk in terms of income, its more fulfilling to be able to work for different publications, she says.

Vaishnavi works freelance and in the NGO space, which she says can be a double-edged sword. I dont have to censor my work to fit a certain ideal, but I do wish I had guidance since Ive barely been in the field for the five years, she says.

A woman in the field

Samyukta says that being a woman can have its pros and cons. Safety is a prime issue: The best way to combat it is to research and prepare. You should know where youre going, who will be there, who your fixers are. Vaishnavi adds that sometimes even if they are prepared, there is always reluctance to send a woman photographer to a charged situation.

Samyukta says that her gender helps when trying to get people more comfortable. Women photographers definitely have an edge when covering women: they always open up to us more comfortably, she explains.

Vaishnavi adds, Im young and five feet tall, which makes me more accessible to the people I shoot. They dont see me as a towering figure.

Mental health

Samyukta says that when she is on the field she concentrates solely on getting the best pictures. In a way, I am detached until my day ends, thats when all the physical and mental exhaustion hits. To deal with this, Ive turned towards activities like yoga that help me relax, she says. Vaishnavi says the kind of attachment you have to a project and how long you spend with it changes the way it affects you. I have been covering various protests, but since they are short-term I dont really have the time to interact with people and empathise, she says.

On the other hand, her longest project, the movement against mining at Hasdeo, had a significant impact on her.

On my first visit, I had taken a picture of a father and son and on my next visit, I found out that they had passed away. That took a great toll on my mental health. Its an inexplicable feeling to think that your photograph of someone might be the last reminder of their life, she says.

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Pro ways to capture emotions - Deccan Herald

Aman Abhisheks piece on the media during the migrant crisis in the wake of the epidemic of COVID-19 (The Wire, 25 June, How the Modi Government Manufactured Public Opinion during the Migrant Crisis) is timely. Many good hearted journalists indeed thought that notwithstanding a definite pattern in the media coverage, the media by and large played a commendable role in bringing the migrant question to the public eye. In the background of such innocence bordering on glib acceptance of medias virtues, Abhisheks commentary underlines the need for a larger discussion on the idea of the public, and by extension mainstream politics, by which I mean, mainly formal, organised politics.

The media may have set the tone, as Abhisheks piece shows, but this was facilitated by the strange silence of mainstream political parties who perhaps owing to lockdown restrictions hardly raised any voice in the immediate aftermath of the breakout of the migrant crisis. By the last days of March and the first fortnight of April, the severity of the crisis was evident. Reports were coming out by mid-April that migrant workers had not been paid their dues of March and were being evicted from their shelters, and they had been frantically searching for modes of transport to go back home.

Another fact of severe consternation was the staggering, immeasurable dimension of the crisis. Central trade unions and mainstream liberal and left parties took time to understand even the surface of what was happening. There was no united statement, no attempt to build a platform of solidarity, no attempt to convene an opposition chief ministers conclave to forge a policy on issues of health and work of the migrant workers, no concerted effort to move the judiciary, and no minimum agenda on the issue of the epidemic and migrant workers.

Solidarity initiatives were local, and mostly spontaneous. The much reviled NGOs, independent groups and associations, and localised political forces fared better. What we may call a spirit of militant philanthropy as a form of solidarity emerged all over the country, and while we may say that thanks to the media we have now a rough picture of what happened in these two months (April-May), we have very little idea of the way solidarity emerged as a principle of social response to the epidemiological crisis by itself a combination of three crises: a public health crisis, an economic-financial crisis, and a labour crisis.

Also read: Travails and Travesties: The Plight of the Migrants Who Didnt Leave Delhi

We can only say that while acts of solidarity indicated a faint sketch of the values of a post-coronavirus society the nation desired, solidarity was not enough as a critical force in building militant opposition to the neoliberal management of the epidemic. In the wake of this new crisis, institutionalised politics was a helpless spectator. We saw its stupefied state as the repeated repression of workers, for instance in Surat, went almost unchallenged.

The media not only facilitated the incorporation of the issue of migrant workers in the agenda of neoliberal reforms, the orientation of media response was also instrumental in awakening institutionalised politics in a particular way to the presence of the migrant workers. The migrant appeared as a fault line in the countrys access system to essential conditions of life, such as health, food and shelter.

No wonder, in the repeated statements of Rahul Gandhi, the issue of migrant workers did not feature centrally, notwithstanding his meeting with migrant labourers in the national capital near the Sukh Dev Vihar flyover on May 15. The whole month of April had passed. Likewise, the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 was resurrected by only do-gooder scholars and lawyers. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) born in 1920 passed its centenary year amidst the silent defeat of organised working class politics in the time of the epidemic.

The question should be raised therefore, what is the nature of this public that constitutes the mainframe of institutional politics, the public that is supposedly the stuff of public politics, public health and public claims? More fundamentally, we must inquire, how was politics demobilised in the wake of the pandemic?

The question cannot be glossed over once we notice that the same media which, till this February was full of politics, covering riots, killings, arrests, civil disobedience, rallies for constitutional justice, demand for citizenship, suddenly went silent and transferred attention to not only the pandemic, but to the scenes of homeward migrant workers travelling hundreds of kilometres, many of them dying and disappearing from the public scene.

What happened to the millions of migrant workers who returned home? Or, what happened to the earlier crisis? Did it also vanish or melt into the succeeding crisis?

We do not know if the mainstream opposition parties realised that a crisis, that much abused word, was indeed overwhelming the country. But its important to note that while they took time to make sense of what was happening and formulate a response, the neoliberal system lost no time to forge its own response.

One of its first acts was to subsume the issue of migrant labour under an agenda of reforms. COVID-19, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeatedly said, called for drastic reforms. The country couldnt go back to pre-corona days. In contrast, there was mainstream oppositions deafening silence. Its imagination of politics was limited to the old, routine parliamentary confabulations and the prescribed mode of union movement of labour protest. This imagination had no space in it for a new vision in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. And no place for migrant workers and public health as two central elements of a society that cares for life.

Also read: Viewing Contemporary India Through the Kautilyan Lens

Recall, in contrast, the Union governments policy reform announcements and the prime ministers addresses to the public. On May 30, as the main phase of the nationwide lockdown was ending, the prime minister in a letter to the nation on completing one year of his second term, said that the nation had taken historic decisions and progressed rapidly in the last year. However he conceded that migrant workers, labourers and others had undergone tremendous suffering during the coronavirus crisis. He assured the people that India, by addressing the plight of our labourers, migrant workers, artisans and craftsmen in small scale industries, hawkers and such fellow countrymen (who) have undergone tremendous suffering, would set an example of post coronavirus economic revival.

This could be achieved through policies specifically designed for migrant workers. Therefore on June 20, Modi launched an employment scheme with an outlay of Rs 50,000 crore for migrant workers who returned home during the lockdown. Modi further said during the nationwide lockdown, talent (as a national asset) returning from cities to villages, would boost rural development. The Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyaan was to be implemented on a mission mode in 125 days in 116 districts in 6 states of the country. On 26 June a web portal for registration was launched. Public works were now to be part of creating an atmanirbhar Bharat a self-reliant India. Make no mistake: the migrant labour issue was subsumed in this neoliberal structuring.

While the mainstream opposition rightly focused on labour deregulation mooted as part of the restructuring of the economy, it did not present an alternative broader vision of a post-corona society, which would put emphasis on policies and principles of care, protection of life and security of migrant workers and caregivers. Such a vision called for imagining a new organisation, devolving public power to the lower levels.

A critique of the two instruments on which the governments administrative-police response to the crisis rested the Plague Act (Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897) and the National Disaster Management Act (2005) was absent in the mainstream political discourse. The mainstream political critique turned out to be fragmentary, superficial and haphazard.

On May 14, 2020, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government has initiated a move to bring all 44 labour-related laws under four labour codes, of which the parliament was aware. The proposed laws, as indicated in the respective Bills tabled in the parliament, would significantly dilute the Factory Act, 1948, and reduce the role and power of factory inspectors to mere facilitators. Instead of acting as a watchdog to ensure factories are run in conformity with labour laws, the inspectors would enable the employers to run their plants. Little attention would be paid to ensuring minimum wages and stipulated working hours.

Sitharaman also announced free rations for two more months for eight crore migrant workers. She confessed that the government of India had not collated any data about the workers and had arrived at this figure by adding up all the reports given by the state governments about migrant workers in various states who had been sheltered and fed at various government-run or NGO-run centres. It seemed that the old adage was coming to haunt the country once again: Never let a crisis go waste.

Watch: Javed Akhtar Recites His Poem on the Plight of Migrant Labourers

The crisis, using public health concerns, led to a restructuring of the economy. Social Darwinism and neo-Malthusian population policies were now geared to produce an India which could claim in bringing the country back from the edge of disaster with minimum loss. The emphasis was on productive labour and productive economy instead of saving lives by expanding public health systems and social security, including access to food. While money supply was further squeezed by refusing to directly transfer cash to millions of poor people, credit and loans were given a fillip. A contract farming driven food grains market was opened up. The public health crisis became the occasion for counting only productive labour and letting the unproductive die.

That the mainstream political opposition failed to make any worthwhile intervention was not because it was ignorant of the existence of migrant workers. But the opposition could not think beyond conventional trade unionism and institutionalised routine politics. Failing to notice the impending crisis, the opposition forgot that the migrant question was a social question. In the absence of a new social vision, the neoliberal regime was able to co-opt the migrant question in the economic recovery agenda. All that was required was an apology from the ruler for the distress of the migrants. The prime minister tendered that apology on March 29.

Ranabir Samaddaris Distinguished Chair in Forced Migration studies, Calcutta Research Group. He can be contacted at ranabir@mcrg.ac.in.

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Not Just the Media, Organised Politics Too Failed India's Migrant Workers - The Wire

The labouring population in general and the migrant workers / daily wage earners in particular are extremely vulnerable to the impact of the Coronavirus induced lockdown in the country. This section of the population has been rendered vulnerable due to their total dependence on daily wage earnings and meagre savings.

The lockdown means a loss of livelihood and therefore they are left with no source of income in order to be able to sustain themselves. Not only in India but if one were to look at their situation on a global level too, they are over represented among the homeless population all over the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating consequences for the most vulnerable sections of the population and has indeed brought about a humanitarian crisis around the world. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are desperately trying to return to their hometowns and are battling with hunger and scorching heat and somehow they wanted to get back to where they belong.

When the cities and urban centres have abandoned them and they are left to struggle for survival, even in their consciousness a place called home seems to be a refuge where they not only feel emotional security but even psychological comfort.

Many countries are doing their best to combat this virus but still, not everyone in the world is lucky enough to afford staying or working from home. Despite the health risks that haunt them, they are compelled to go out and work to sustain themselves and their families. These migrant workers toil day and night to keep our cities functioning and as the lockdown was announced, they were compelled to walk day and night with little food and no rest for hundreds of kilometres in sheer desperation.

While taking the intensive journeys home, migrant workers were sprayed with bleach in a bid by state authorities for disinfecting; them, they were kept in jail like isolation centres on state borders before they could be allowed to go home and even once they did reach their native villages, they received suspicion and resistance from other villagers as they feared that these outsiders could have brought the disease with them.

After arriving to their villages, some have been forced to sleep on trees because of overcrowded family homes and since many of them dont have personal rooms in their houses, they had no other ways to keep them isolated from rest of the family. The scenario was continuously worsening as the government had promised them two meals a day but the queues were tremendously long and food fell insufficient. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a financial package of 1.7 lakh crore aimed at helping the poor but given the widespread and extensive nature of the crisis, even this amount seemed insufficient.

The protocol of social distancing is not viable for migrant workers and daily wage earners because they do not have access to the basic necessities of life and cannot afford to sustain themselves even for a few days if they dont go to work in the outside world. Even though there may be risks to their lives, they are forced to venture outside.

They are not in a position to follow such advice and follow guidelines that speak of social distancing or avoiding crowded places. If they do not access basic necessities of life then how can they be expected to follow these guidelines and advices?

Measures like hand washing are important for protecting human and ensuring health during the coronavirus outbreak but migrant workers often do not have sanitation services and face a lack of basic hand washing facilities. These migrant workers and daily wage earners live in congested places where living conditions are no better.

In this situation maintaining physical distancing, avoiding crowded places or maintaining personal hygiene seem like impractical propositions that the section of the population is finding impossible to follow. The government should arrange transportation for all vulnerable, mobile medical facilities for the migrant workers hygiene, food and water. Whenever economic crises takes place in the country, it is the migrant worker who faces the biggest loss because of their vulnerable status. The concept of crisis as context becomes relevant in this scenario and is also connected toWalter Benjamins rejoinder to traditional Marxism in his essay The Concept of History.

Benjamins point is that the present of the oppressed is never an exception that is disconnected from his social past.

Analogously, the current state of exception facing the migrant workers in India is barely an exception. Rather, it is temporally connected to forming a tradition of multiple and ever deepening fractures of lived spaces, histories, and livelihoods in their everyday existence.

Many questions need to be answered and several more are incessantly arising .What about the migrants amid the Covid -19 outbreak? What are the steps and initiatives taken by the government to cover the threats brought forward by the novel coronavirus? What are the steps that have been initiated related to managing the health situation of migrant workers and daily wage earners? Everyday this vulnerable section of the population is facing poverty, hunger and deprivation but still continues to make efforts to live in this world with dignity. But will they be able to survive?

From giving birth while walking for hundreds of kilometres on alienating highways to succumbing to fatal road accidents that claimed the lives of several migrant workers, the apathy of the class is visible once again as the pandemic engulfs all of us.

The government should pay heed and attention to the migrant crisis and look for better ways to help the migrant workers to overcome their sufferings and hardships.

Nusrat Firdos is a Research Scholar at the Department of Sociology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligrah.

Link:
India's Migrant Crisis Highlights the Cleavages of Institutional Apathy and Policy Neglect in the Country - The New Leam

SANTIAGO Six months ago, Venezuelan emergency doctor Norelis Portal was laid off from Chile's public health service because she had not Received the green light from the country's stringent medical certification system.

Today, she is one of thousands of migrant health workers recruited to the frontlines of its fight against the new coronavirus.

Portal, 52, and her team visit COVID-19 sufferers at home and in state isolation units in some of Santiago's most crowded, poor and infected areas to conduct tests and assess symptoms, keeping the burden off near-saturated hospitals.

"The last 20 years in Venezuela taught my generation how to handle crises," Portal told Reuters.

Portal migrated to Chile in 2017 with experience in emergency and respiratory care. Her transformation from outsider to the frontlines of Chile's battle against coronavirus holds up a mirror to the country's uneasy response to wave of migration, largely from crisis-hit Venezuela, that has grown fivefold in 30 years.

Center-right President Sebastian Pinera made migration a key issue of his 2017 election campaign, pledging to tighten laws and crack down on foreigner-driven crime. Today, his government is appealing for migrant professionals' help.

Chile is nearing the peak of its coronavirus outbreak, with a caseload among the worst per capita in the world and deaths predicted to follow in the coming months.There are a total 284,541 cases and 5,920 fatalities.

Medical workers are exhausted and falling victim to the virus, and specialists are in short supply. So Chile has turned to retired doctors, student nurses and imported talent.

Unpublished figures obtained by Reuters show almost 3,000 public health service workers are off sick with coronavirus, but 13,849 more have been signed up, including more than 600 doctors, more than half of them foreign nationals.

Many countries have a large migrant health workforce, but in Chile many struggle to gain work certification because of rigorous and expensive local checks. Health workers from Venezuela,Colombia and Cuba often end up asUber drivers, petrol pump attendants or waiters.

GRATEFUL

Many migrant health workers are specialists in areas which Chile's public sector has historically lacked and now desperately needs to keep patients alive, the director of the country's civil service said in an interview.

Alejandro Weber said foreign doctors brought "knowledge, experience but also the desire to lend their skills to the state," pointing to a new "social pact" for the multicultural nation.

An emergency law last deployed by Chile's government after the 2010 earthquake allows it to recruit thousands more health workers.

Many have been drafted from the private sector but a large number are foreign medics for whom the usual stringent checks have been suspended.

Juan Carlos Riera, president of the Chilean Association of Foreign Medics, said the move came as a huge relief for medics to be able to use skills honed over years.

"Many doctors have told me they would prefer to expose themselves to the virus than to continue having no income or a minimal one that's impossible to live on," he said.

Dr. Jesus Valera Macho, 36, a Venezuelan trauma surgeon who was working as a cleaner before joining Portal's team in March, said taking on the coronavirus was the least he could do.

"We're not Chilean but this country gave us the chance to restart our lives," he said. "It's we who are grateful."

I SERVE MY COUNTRY

The campaign led by the civil service, I Serve My Country in an Emergency, drew 13,000 applicants, with 99% indicating immediate availability and 70% willing to be transferred anywhere in the country. They included 1,000 foreign medics, many of them experienced specialists.

Medical workers say the help cannot come soon enough. Carlos Romero, head of intensive care at the University of Chile's clinical hospital, said he sometimes debated if he had time to sleep or eat.

"There are six of us overseeing 100 critical care beds, that will soon rise to 140," he said.

Unions have cautioned against relying on unchecked resources. Dr. Patricio Meza, of Chile's College of Doctors, said not fully certified should not work unsupervised.

"The most important thing is to safeguard patients' safety," he said.

A nurse at a central Santiago hospital, who withheld her name because she was not authorized to speak to the media, said the gains outweighed the risks.

"It's better to have more people, someone who can alert you to a problem with a patient, than that they are left alone and something happens before you realize it," she said.

Portal said her generation was accustomed to facing crises head on. Her father locked her indoors during a violent uprising when she was 22, but she escaped through the window to help treat the injured in her local hospital.

"I feel trepidation but no fear anymore," she said. "As a doctor you can't do anything but act. This is a moment. It will be tough but it is temporary. It will end."

(Reporting by Aislinn Laing; Additional reporting Natalia Ramos; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Chile's Migrant Medics Move to Frontlines in Pandemic Battle - The New York Times