SAMSUN, Turkey

An Afghan medical doctor is thankful to Turkish authorities who dispatched an air ambulance to his homeland and ensured his treatment when he contracted the novel coronavirus.

Ahmad Zarif Sedeqi, a young doctor working at Turkey's Ondokuz Mayis University hospital in the northern Samsun province, was in Afghanistan in September for his annual vacation when he started to show COVID-19 symptoms and later tested positive.

The young doctor was not referred to a hospital in Afghanistan due to lack of medical means, and he contacted Turkish officials for assistance. On Health Minister Fahrettin Koca's instructions, Turkish authorities on Oct. 15 sent an air ambulance to Afghanistan to bring him to Turkey.

For 10 days, Sedeqi received treatment in the hospital he is working and went into a 10-day self-quarantine before returning to the hospital as a doctor.

The Afghan doctor said he went through a thorny process as his sickness aggravated in Afghanistan, but now that he is fully functional, he looked forward to working hard to contribute to Turkey’s battle against the virus.

He called on people to wear masks, pay attention to their personal hygiene, saying: “Breathing with a mask on is a million times better than being on a ventilator.”

Turkey has so far registered over 520,000 patients whereas the country's death toll reached 14,316. More than 418,000 patients have recovered from the virus.

*Writing by Ali Murat Alhas in Ankara