Words cannot express how we all are beyond indebted to the health workers around the world. You are putting your lives at risk for the sake of saving all of us. You have given a new, profound meaning to the term "the ultimate sacrifice."
Within the cancer community, health providers and patients alike have undoubtedly suffered the worst of the coronavirus's double burden. We all know that cancer does not wait for Covid-19 to end. Its destructive work is genetically mapped out with precision. In fact, cancer thrives when the system is broken.
As a mother of a cancer survivor, I know only too well the worry of an infection for an immunosuppressed cancer patient. To add to that the anguish of having essential services for diagnosis or treatment canceled or delayed, when we all know that timing is crucial when it comes to cancer, is beyond imaginable. And to know that our precious health workers' lives are at heightened risk because of the scarcity of inexpensive protective equipment is harrowing and shocking, to say the least.
Having said that, it has been extremely heartening to learn about how our cancer community has innovated and adapted to address the real challenges people face on the ground, day in and day out. The stories that have been shared are nothing short of heroic, with both personal and collective herculean endeavors being made to ensure that cancer diagnosis and treatment are not run over by the destructiveness of Covid-19.
Ironically, the fight against the coronavirus has required us all to don masks — and yet, it has taken the coronavirus, at a tragic and exorbitant human cost, to actually unmask and unmuzzle too many uncomfortable truths about a global health system that desperately needs investments and improvements to equitably care for all the patients who rely on it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/opinions/covid-19-unmasks-what-cancer-patients-have-long-known/index.html