Ambulance driver celebrates recovery by dancing in hospital

Bengaluru: 26-year-old HR Kumara, an ambulance driver who was discharged from St John’s Medical College and Hospital on Tuesday celebrated his recovery and victory over Covid-19 by dancing to the beats of the song Muqabla from Kadhalan. His fellow patients encouraged him to dance and he was accompanied by a doctor in a PPE kit. The video of this went viral rapidly.

Kumara searched for a hospital bed when his oxygen saturation level dropped to 75 and his lungs CT scan showed an infection score of 18/25. He claimed that the dance was a way of thanking the Emergency Response Team and volunteers who aided him in finding the hospital bed on time.

He traveled for 300 km in search of a bed. Initially, he went to Mysuru but as there was no bed available, he returned to Bengaluru when Farah Zaiba of ERT helped him. He said, “I was in the emergency ward of a private hospital in Electronic City when thanks to Farah madam, I got a bed at St John’s Hospital.”

Farah calls Kumara a ‘man with jazba (passion)’ and said that she had never seen a man with such gratitude for life. She first got his call for help at 11:30 pm on May 18. Farah said, “Kumara is an orphan and had three friends with him. When I got his case, of an ambulance driver who has been saving other people’s lives, I had to step up.”

“The emergency ward would have cost him Rs 30,000 per day. He and his friends were running out of cash and asked us to find a bed through BBMP. We guided Kumara’s friends and pleaded with the Anekal BBMP war room for a bed’, she said.

On May 19, at 1 pm, Farah managed to block a bed for Kumara at St John’s Hospital but she found that he was anxious. His friends urged Farah to call his cousins, who reside in a nearby village, to make a decision.

Farah said, “I told them he was in a serious condition. They were clueless and asked me to decide.”She then advised Kumara and his friends to get him admitted. At 3 am, Kumara’s friend stated that they reached the hospital and Farah gave them all the emergency contact numbers and coordinated with Arogya Mitra for admission formalities.

Farah is an IT professional and volunteers with ERT at 9 pm after her regular job. She manages to sleep for 3-4 hours every day. She said, “I was relieved the day his treatment began and called him on Tuesday morning to check on him. To my pleasant surprise, Kumara sent this video, thanking me and saying he wanted to surprise me. He values life like no one else.”