Stories from the frontlines

Karan Solanki is a part of the cleaning staff at Narayana Health SRCC Children's Hospital in Mumbai's Haji Ali and doubles up as a ward boy

In these pandemic-crazed times, every day I give silent thanks to all the doctors, nurses and paramedics who are risking their lives at the frontline of our battle against the coronavirus. But a telephone call with a 30-year-old tenth-pass hospital employee last week made me realise that there’s another category of frontline workers that tends to go unnoticed and perhaps, under-appreciated. This is the category that Karan Solanki falls in. He’s part of the cleaning staff at Narayana Health SRCC Children's Hospital in Mumbai’s Haji Ali and doubles up as a ward boy. When Covid-positive paediatric patients started being referred