Delhi: A 38 year old professor from Jamia Millia Islamia died fighting COVID-19 at a Faridabad hospital on Monday night, after she pleaded for an ICU bed for herself on twitter.
Dr Nabila Sadiq, a PhD scholar from JNU and her parents tested positive in the starting of this month, and were taken to different hospitals for COVID-19 care.
Ten days before Nabila’s death, her mother Nuzhat had also died of COVID-19 related complications. Her father, Sadique was hospitalised for the same but was eventually discharged because of improvement in health and is now under home quarantine.
Friends and family said Nabila wasn’t aware of her mother’s death, and died worrying about her parents.
“When I came to know about her health, I rushed to her home with other students, and we started looking for a bed. We found one at Alshifa hospital, where she also tested positive for COVID-19. Two to four students would always stay at the hospital. Meanwhile, we rushed her mother to Sanjay Gandhi Hospital but she passed away. We didn’t tell Nabila because she was critical…” said Laraib Neyazi, an MA student of Nabila from Jamia, to Indianexpress.com.
Her students helped perform her mother’s last rites on May 7 and around the same time, Nabila’s health deteriorated. Waqar, a student from JMI, recalls calling “every hospital in Delhi-NCR to get an oxygen bed”.
Nabila’s father got to know about his daughter’s death in the afternoon of May 17. Nabila’s doctors also mentioned she wasn’t responding to medicines and treatment since the night before. On Tuesday, her students and friends performed her last rites at Mangolpuri, where her mother was buried ten days earlier.
The father with tears in his eyes said to his family members: “I think she loved her mother more and left with her… leaving me alone here.” The friends, family and especially students are devastated from the news.