Apothecary 2020

Medical students step forward to the Covid-19 front line
Bension Tilley, Asad-Ali Rehemtulla, Roshni Goodka, Maneera Jobanputra, Niraj
Doshi, Joshua Bekhor, Dr Carly Szasz & Dr Chris Jenner – Elliott Hall Medical
Centre, Hatch End, Pinner, Middlesex
British Secretary of State for War in 1914, Field
Marshall Lord Kitchener’s iconic advertisement by
Alfred Leete was developed into a recruitment poster
that is widely known to this day. It helped drive a
‘recruitment frenzy’ where nearly half a million men
voluntarily joined the Armed Forces in less than two
months, long before conscription followed in January
1916.
Fast forward 106 years to the outbreak of a novel
coronavirus, and although it wasn’t posters doing the
rallying cry for volunteers, but the same call to arms was
made. And as tens of thousands of people stepped
forward to support communities, this piece pays tribute
to the medical students who played their part on the
frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 1940, a small team of men and women, led by Vice
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, hatched an improvised
plan in the tunnels deep beneath Dover Castle. In just a
few days, those ordinary men and women working
there had achieved something extraordinary. They had
located and coordinated all the necessary equipment,
people and artillery to lift an entire army from the brink
of catastrophe. Along the way, they showed great
flexibility to modify their improvised scheme through a
number of setbacks. This was ‘Operation Dynamo’; the
miraculous British effort to evacuate the Allied forces
from the beaches of Dunkirk to safety at Dover. Though
the Battle of Dunkirk went down in history as a German
tactical victory, there is little doubt that the measures,
directed from Dover Castle, enabled the authorities to
save vast numbers of lives, and to contribute to the
Allied victory over Hitler.
That war-time spirit of tackling adversity by thinking
differently has many parallels in today’s pandemic.
Whilst it is crucially important not to compare the
suffering and senseless loss of life during the Great War
or the Second World War, Covid-19 is an enemy that
requires aggressive confrontation, the likes of which
have never been faced previously in peacetime. There
had never been a greater need for initiative, creativity
and meticulous planning, since the standard was so
aptly set by our forebears at Dover.
In 1945 with World War II was coming to an end,
there was a critical shortage of medics. In an echo of the
call to Kitchener two decades earlier, the British Army
put out a call for volunteers from the final year ranks of
London’s medical schools. Almost 100 students stepped
forward to serve their country, leaving their homes and
hospitals to be deployed in Holland at a time of great
famine.
At the very last minute, they were diverted to the
newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp,
which had been the location of the murder of more than
50,000 people, the vast majority of whom were Jewish,
including Anne Frank and her sister, Margot.
Tuberculosis and typhus were widespread and
accounted for a large proportion of the 500 daily deaths
that occurred in the camp in the days after its liberation.
Several of the medical students contracted these
illnesses and became critically unwell, though none
died. In spite of this unimaginable challenge, the result
of these fledgling medics’ heroic efforts, under the
command of British Forces, was clear to see. Their
intervention had reduced the death rate in post-
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