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Egyptian Doctor to Asharq Al-Awsat: Virus Did Not Deter Me from Carrying out My Duties

A man receives medicine at a medical center in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters)
A man receives medicine at a medical center in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters)
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Egyptian Doctor to Asharq Al-Awsat: Virus Did Not Deter Me from Carrying out My Duties

A man receives medicine at a medical center in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters)
A man receives medicine at a medical center in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters)

During the beginning of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Egyptian doctor, Marwa Akr, focused on improving the immunity of her four daughters because it was a primary barrier in confronting the disease.

As a doctor of Internal Medicine doctor at the Tanta Mental Health Hospital, Akr, 42, was on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19. This however, did not prevent her from contracting the disease.

She told Asharq Al-Awsat how she first noticed minor symptoms, such as a constant headache, a high fever and abdominal pain. She later noticed the same symptoms in one of her daughters and that’s when she decided to take a test.

The symptoms appeared during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Even though Akr is a doctor, she had to go through three hospitals before being able to take the test.

She and her daughter tested positive for coronavirus.

“It was difficult to determine the source of the infection,” she said, explaining that the symptoms emerged soon after her husband came in contact with a large number of people during a wake for his deceased mother.

Her husband became infected soon after, and he likely passed on the virus to Akr and their daughter, Rimas.

Akr and Rimas were forced to remain in quarantine at hospital for two weeks. The husband soon joined them. The remaining three daughters were forced to stay with their grandmother until their parents recovered.

Akr remarked how the tables turned against her, from doctor to patient, as she underwent treatment for the virus.

“I was able to experience the difficult situation and harsh psychological turmoil quarantine patients endure,” she recalled. “Most patients were feeling down and awaiting death.”

She said she was worried that such a negative environment would impact her ten-year-old daughter. She also spoke of the sense of panic among the attending nurses, some of whom were fresh graduates.

Akr revealed that during her stay and coming from her experience as a doctor, she managed to grow close to the nurses and medical staff, including the hospital director. “We were allowed to grant the quarantine patients greater space to leave their rooms and walk the hospital halls,” she said.

“We sterilized a large abandoned balcony at the hospital and gave patients a space where they could enjoy the sun,” she added. Gradually, people’s morale began to improve.

Rimas, meanwhile, preoccupied herself with her studies. She studied diligently through the education ministry’s online platform. She also helped other children confined in quarantine cope with their new surroundings.

Akr, her husband and daughter have since recovered from the disease. Akr is now dedicating most of her time in supporting patients who are isolating at home.

“I tell my daughter that perhaps God wanted us to experience quarantine in order to help others,” she noted, revealing that she was still in contact with several of the patients she met during her treatment period.

They have all joined a WhatsApp group that they dedicate to gathering plasma donations to help other patients.

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Why Greenland? Remote but Resource-Rich Island Occupies a Key Position in a Warming World

Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
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Why Greenland? Remote but Resource-Rich Island Occupies a Key Position in a Warming World

Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)
Large icebergs float away as the sun rises near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 16, 2019. (AP)

Remote, icy and mostly pristine, Greenland plays an outsized role in the daily weather experienced by billions of people and in the climate changes taking shape all over the planet.

Greenland is where climate change, scarce resources, tense geopolitics and new trade patterns all intersect, said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko.

The world's largest island is now "central to the geopolitical, geoeconomic competition in many ways," partly because of climate change, Dabelko said.

Since his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump has expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime US ally and a founding member of NATO. It is also home to a large US military base.

Why is Greenland coveted? Think of Greenland as an open refrigerator door or thermostat for a warming world, and it's in a region that is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, said New York University climate scientist David Holland.

Locked inside are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is becoming less so.

Many of the same minerals are currently being supplied mostly by China, so other countries such as the United States are interested, Dabelko said. Three years ago, the Denmark government suspended oil development offshore from the territory of 57,000 people.

But more than the oil, gas or minerals, there's ice — a "ridiculous" amount, said climate scientist Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine.

If that ice melts, it would reshape coastlines across the globe and potentially shift weather patterns in such a dramatic manner that the threat was the basis of a Hollywood disaster movie. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melts, the world's seas would rise by 24 feet (7.4 meters). Nearly a foot of that is so-called zombie ice, already doomed to melt no matter what happens, a 2022 study found.

Since 1992, Greenland has lost about 182 billion tons (169 billion metric tons) of ice each year, with losses hitting 489 billion tons a year (444 billion metric tons) in 2019.

Greenland will be "a key focus point" through the 21st century because of the effect its melting ice sheet will have on sea levels, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "It will likely become a bigger contributor in the future."

That impact is "perhaps unstoppable," NYU's Holland said.

Are other climate factors at play? Greenland also serves as the engine and on/off switch for a key ocean current that influences Earth's climate in many ways, including hurricane and winter storm activity. It's called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, and it's slowing down because more fresh water is being dumped into the ocean by melting ice in Greenland, Serreze said.

A shutdown of the AMOC conveyor belt is a much-feared climate tipping point that could plunge Europe and parts of North America into prolonged freezes, a scenario depicted in the 2004 movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

"If this global current system were to slow substantially or even collapse altogether — as we know it has done in the past — normal temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe would change drastically," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. "Agriculture would be derailed, ecosystems would crash, and ‘normal’ weather would be a thing of the past."

Greenland is also changing color as it melts from the white of ice, which reflects sunlight, heat and energy away from the planet, to the blue and green of the ocean and land, which absorb much more energy, Holland said.

Greenland plays a role in the dramatic freeze that two-thirds of the United States is currently experiencing. And back in 2012, weather patterns over Greenland helped steer Superstorm Sandy into New York and New Jersey, according to winter weather expert Judah Cohen of the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research.

Because of Greenland's mountains of ice, it also changes patterns in the jet stream, which brings storms across the globe and dictates daily weather. Often, especially in winter, a blocking system of high pressure off Greenland causes Arctic air to plunge to the west and east, smacking North America and Europe, Cohen said.

Why is Greenland's location so important? Because it straddles the Arctic circle between the United States, Russia and Europe, Greenland is a geopolitical prize that the US and others have eyed for more than 150 years. It's even more valuable as the Arctic opens up more to shipping and trade.

None of that takes into consideration the unique look of the ice-covered island that has some of the Earth's oldest rocks.

"I see it as insanely beautiful. It's eye-watering to be there," said Holland, who has conducted research on the ice more than 30 times since 2007. "Pieces of ice the size of the Empire State Building are just crumbling off cliffs and crashing into the ocean. And also, the beautiful wildlife, all the seals and the killer whales. It’s just breathtaking."