When he was volunteering as a medical translator at New York’s community-organised COVID-19 Bengali hotline during the spring lockdown last year, Lala Tanmoy Das received a call from a woman who could not speak English.
“It was from a Bangladeshi woman in her 50s. She displayed shortness of breath, was profusely sweating and having chest pain, radiating to the jaw and arm,” says Das, 31, who as an MD-PhD student immediately recognised that her condition was critical.
“In medical terms, we would translate this as experiencing a heart attack.”
While trying to keep the caller calm, Das urged her to call the emergency services. His job as a volunteer for the COVID hotline was only to give general advice about the pandemic.