Simple Acts

By Achouak Boutalbi, Touggourt, Algeria

I live in Touggourt, a city in the south of Algeria. I’m a 5th year pharmacy student.

In the first week of the pandemic, back in April, I wondered, “How can I be helpful as a student?” We don’t have big hospitals with lots of healthcare professionals who can cover the needs of our community.

I thought especially about people with diabetes, like my mother. Their immune systems are weak, so they are vulnerable to infection. With COVID-19, they can't even visit their doctors.

So I started a project with a laboratory in my area. A month before Ramadan, we contacted people with diabetes, to arrange with them how they could get their drugs, and explain changes they would need to make to their treatment protocols, during fasting. We divided the patients into groups and assigned 60 people to each of us who were volunteering.

When Ramadan came, I was calling everyone my group to check on them and see how the treatment adaptations were working for them. One day, a woman who I had called asked me, "Are you getting paid for doing this?"

I said, “No, we're volunteering.”

She said, "Oh my daughter, I was really afraid of this pandemic, I used to have permission to fast and get a medicine adjustment from my doctor, but since I couldn't reach him, I had the feeling that I was going to suffer. But now I was fasting the whole month following your instructions, and nothing happened. It might seem like it's not that important to call someone and explain how to use medicines, but it really makes a huge difference in our case as diabetics. Knowing that you're volunteering makes me feel that we're not forgotten, there's a hope for us to survive in these conditions."

Well, I’ve received many thanks from my patients, but her words, and her soft voice, explained more than what she said. That call made my day. It made me think about the meaning of being helpful, and the doses of hope we inject in people. It's simply priceless to know that you're part of the reason behind someone's healthy life.