UAE: ‘Truely Extraordinary’ Flight to Repatriate 75 Pregnant Women
Seventy-five pregnant women will leave Dubai for India on one single flight to Kochi today, as the second phase of coronavirus repatriation flights gets underway on Saturday. It is set to depart at 12.45 pm from the Dubai International Airport Terminal 2.
Neeraj Agarwal, press consul at the Indian consulate said that all women are over 32 weeks pregnant. “We have one woman is in the 35th week of her pregnancy. Two doctors and two nurses are on-board the flight to assist the women in case of emergencies,” said Agarwal. A total of 181 passengers are on-board the flight to Kochi, said the Consul.
Phase 2 of ‘Vande Bharat Mission’ has officially begun on May 16 and in the following days, there will be 18 repatriation flights from the UAE to India with 13 flights to Kerala.
Agarwal called the flight a ‘truly extraordinary’ one as people with various and several distresses who are flying home.
“Along with pregnant women, we have 35 medical cases of which 28 are serious. This includes a patient in the last stages of cancer, one patient with a brain tumour, and two passengers who are to undergo a kidney transplant – the donor and the receiver,” said Agarwal.
The mortal remains of four-year-old Vyshnav Krishnadas, who died of leukaemia, is also on-board. “His parents will be accompanying his remains home,” said Agarwal. “Two passengers who have lost their wives are also flying home – K Vijayakumar and Prasanth Prabhakaran Nair,” he added.
The Consulate has said on the first phase of Vande Bharat Mission a total of 2,079 passengers were repatriated from Dubai to India. The break up is as follows: workers 760, stranded tourist, visitors and students 438, medical emergency cases 398, pregnant women 190, senior citizens 126, and others 167.
