From the hospital to the home, from the distress faced with the death of the sick to the fear of infecting his family, the choices that are imposed day to nightmares at night: AFPTV has followed the daily lives of caregivers at war with the new coronavirus.
AFP videographers in Paris, Beirut, Stockholm, São Paulo, Los Angeles, Dakar and Daegu went to the end of April to meet these doctors, nurses, paramedics, first-line caregivers and celebrated everywhere as anonymous heroes. Here are the portraits of four of them, taken from life.
Argenteuil (suburb of Paris) - Axel Hirwe, 29, intern in anesthesia-resuscitation at the Argenteuil hospital.
8:30 a.m. that day, Axel Hirwe began 24 hours on call. Blouse, slippers, head to the resuscitation department. Quickly, the alarm of a scope (monitor) sounds: there is a cardiac arrest. Intervention. The patient's pulse resumed but his brain was badly damaged. He won't stay overnight.
The young man accuses the blow. "Unfortunately or fortunately, we get attached to the patients. He is a patient that we saw in spontaneous ventilation, that is to say that he breathed by himself, that he could communicate with us. So we were able to chat with him, know his way of life. (...) After respiratory exhaustion, we had to put him on mechanical ventilation. It is very hard after knowing the patient to realize that finally he will die. "
There are 40 seriously ill patients in this unit. Axel Hirwe, small round glasses, moves on to another case. A man should be placed on his stomach, prone, to improve his breathing. Five people are mobilized. "It went as well as we could have expected".
Then there are the calls to families. "It's better than the previous days but he still remains in a serious situation ...", he said on the phone. "We have to reassure them but not too much, because they are still in a serious situation: they are in intensive care, they are still intubated. But sometimes they need a little hope."
The afternoon ends on a positive note: a diabetic patient is better, she was able to leave her bed.
Returning home after his guard in Clichy, ten kilometers from the hospital, Axel tries to relax without talking about medicine with his five roommates. He calls his mother. "It worries her a lot, I try to reassure her," he says. At the other end of the line, she lets him hear the applause from the caregivers.
Beirut - Ali Awerké, 34 years old, coronavirus emergency nurse at Rafic Hariri university hospital.
Two ambulances stop in front of the coronavirus emergency rooms. Ali Awerké welcomes a patient who has been escorted, while talking to another near the front door. "I'm coming, just let me install this patient and I'll come help you, okay?" Then in the corridor: "Put it here in the first room".
All day long is racing. At the nurses' office, he gathers the equipment. "Three tubes for laboratories and for blood culture". "Pack swabs and blood samples." "Answers the phone:" Ali, emergencies ... "Go take care of a patient:" Extend your arm ... extend it ".
Ali Awerké volunteered to join the coronavirus team at the start of the crisis. "I had no clothes with me, I had nothing. I joined the team and I called my wife to say: + 'I will stay here and, unfortunately, I will not be able to see for a while '". Since then, he has lived alone in his parents' house in Beirut.
Tonight is different: after a PCR test he returns home for the first time in two months. He wants to "surprise" his family.
The call to prayer marking the end of the Ramadan fast is heard when the young man arrives in his home village of Es Saksakiye. Reunion moved. Bouquet of flowers in hand, he kisses his wife, his youngest jumps into his arms. Finally, with the family, they savor the break-fast dinner.
"I'm really happy, I'm going to sleep under the same roof as my children and my wife. (...) I missed the house sitting on the veranda. It's been two months long," he says. "It's been centuries".
Solna (Sweden) - Lars Falk, 43, doctor and head of the ECMO (Oxygenation by extracorporeal membrane) unit at the Karolinska University Hospital.
The service is always full at the ECMO unit. This is where patients with severe respiratory distress arrive. The equipment is invasive, the treatment painful.
"We hope that the patients we bring here will survive with ECMO treatment, (which) they would not do with regular intensive care treatment," said Dr. Lars Falk. With conventional treatment, they would die in 24 hours.
There are many requests and few places. The daily routine of Doctor Falk is made of difficult choices. "We really have to select the right patients and during this selection, of course, we also select people who are deprived (of this treatment) and these are very difficult decisions to make."
When he gets home, the two-day bearded doctor takes a break. "Some days are more tiring than others, but when you go home, to your family, to your children, they also relieve you."
Difficult nevertheless to really drop out. "Often you feel like you are coming home and having accomplished something."
But in the evening, "it's easier to dwell on some of the decisions you made during the day - whether or not it was okay to put this patient on extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation." By risking letting others die.
Sao Paulo - Jaques Sztajnbok, 55, head of the intensive care unit at the Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Disease in Sao Paulo.
One death per day: that is the average at the Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Disease, whose intensive care unit has been 100% occupied since mid-April by serious cases of patients suffering from the new coronavirus.
Everyday since the start of the crisis, Dr. Jaques Sztajnbok has been there. "We have to discuss each case every day, at each visit, and do tests to see if what works for one patient also works for another, we see that day by day because we don't have established protocol since we did not know this disease ".
As a manager, he must "lead by example". But the doctor with heavy dark circles is worried all the time. For his patients. For his colleagues, many of whom have been diagnosed positive - "a concern that we have never had in previous epidemics".
For her family. "We always have this anxiety, this anxiety about what (...) we could bring home, there is this anxiety that did not exist before, there is a worry for the children".
When he returns home to a wealthy district of São Paulo with his wife Fabiane, an infectious disease specialist in the same hospital, it is the same thing every time: things in the hall, the shower, the clothes to be washed.
But the Covid-19 is there. "At dinner, they always talk about what happened while on call," says their son Daniel, 10.
"We have a load of worry and stress that builds up throughout the day and when we get home we need to talk about it," says the doctor.
His wife recalls his daily awakenings haunted by the epidemic. In the middle of the night, "anxious and worried". In the morning, when she says to herself: "fortunately (...) that I am well and that I have the courage to face this disease".
Today is special, Jaques Sztajnbok is celebrating its 55th anniversary. Surprise basket, candles and children's card. "Courageous, I think it's an adjective they didn't write on previous birthday cards," he said.