In Remembrance of a Dr. Israel Bactol

Reflections from March 22, 2020

Early Saturday morning

Brussels, Belgium

Two weeks on to the lockdown in Belgium, I received a call from my brother urging me to wake for an important news. Still half asleep and struggling to focus my senses, I joined our urgent family call. “Sister, do you remember Dr. Israel Bactol, our 3rd cousin?…He is gone.” Silence…..quivering lips….stuttering voice….

What do you mean “gone”?

My mom then narrated the story fresh from a few hours before how she herself received this sad news ab

out our cousin, Dr. Israel, a young, well-loved doctor who served the poor communities in Mindoro and Nueva Ecija, and training as a cardiologist at the Philippine Heart Center. He has become one of the first casualties of COVID 19 in my home country, the Philippines.

Our paths, unfortunately, never crossed and only my old medical books were shared with him during his arduous training through medical school. I pursued my own path in surgery then cancer rese

arch while he experienced grass roots medicine and specialised training in cardiology. I never met him but i could easily imagine that he must have been a very well-loved physician. My family, relatives, people he served and worked with recounted his kindness and empathy as a doctor. Tributes for him and several other healthcare workers who have been lost amidst the pandemic were overflowing. The gravity of his loss was truly palpable within the communities he served. Our paths diverged from the very beginning yet, somehow, that moment when I received the sad news, I envisioned a life path that could have been mine. Had I stayed in the Philippines…I could have been that doctor on the frontline…I could have been that doctor that family and friends would have lost.

Hearing about Dr. Israel’s death and the sacrifices of so many other brothers and sisters in the health care profession greatly affected my morale and self-worth at the beginning of the pandemic. I felt useless, irrelevant and for one moment…lost in the hurricane of events. I should have, could have, would have been fighting this war. Instead, I am in my nest in Brussels…safe, unscarred, and alive. Like a soldier not going to battle…I felt left behind and at the same time, afraid of the uncertainty and the risk. It made me question what could be my mission? Why am I here and not in a hospital? It moved me to ask, how can i help? How can I contribute? How can I join the fight even if I am 10,000 kilometers away?