Redefining global care: Duty, service and choices made in the time of COVID-19

When the WHO Representative to Oman Dr Akjemal Magtymova was assigned her new duty station in Syria, traveling in the midst of the pandemic presented a formidable obstacle. All commercial flights were cancelled, and other options meant several days of travel, uncertainties and quarantines while crossing borders, and an increased chance of contracting COVID-19. “I was not content to start working on my new assignment from Oman. I am a person of duty,” she says of her desire to be physically present at her new post.