New Delhi: Three from Odisha – Damayanti Rout, Khulana Barik and Sibani Das – were among the 51 nursing professionals conferred with National Florence Nightingale Award for 2021 by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday.
Damayanti is working as an auxiliary nurse and midwife (ANM) at the public health sub-centre in Gounighasa under the Harichandanpur block of Keonjhar district. She rides a bicycle to hard-to-reach villages surrounded by forests with no motorable roads to carry out immunisation work. She is also involved in Information, Education & Communication (IEC) activities for community awareness and distribution of insecticidal mosquito nets. She counsels and motivates people for family planning programmes and Swachha Bharat Abhiyan.
Both Sibani of Ganjam and Khulana of Jagatsinghpur have two decades of experience as nurses.
45-year-old Khulana is working as labour in-charge in the Gynaecology department of Jagatsinghpur district headquarters hospital. Despite the threat of the COVID pandemic, she handled the delivery of infected pregnant women and also took care of the newborns.
During cyclone Yash in 2021 and subsequent floods in Jagatsinghpur, Khulana ensured that all women in their final stage of pregnancy from rural areas and villages nearby Jagatsinghpur town were brought to DHH for safe delivery and offered her services beyond duty hours.
Hailing from Kantabania village in Jajpur district, Sibani has been working at MKCG Medical College and Hospital in Berhampur since 2007 and is currently the head nurse. She was posted at Tata COVID Hospital in Sitalapalli during the COVID first and second waves.
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Having made nursing a mission in her life, she exhibited enormous strength while serving COVID patients during the pandemic. She helped them to trim their beard with toiletries, which infused life into the otherwise gloomy atmosphere of the ward, and also won her praise.
The National Florence Nightingale Awards were instituted in the year 1973 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as a mark of recognition for the meritorious services rendered by nurses and nursing professionals to society.
Healthcare worker Premalata Barik was conferred with the prestigious awards for 2020, in September last year.
