CodeBlue is inviting all health care workers from either the public or private sector – doctors across seniority, nurses, pharmacists, assistant medical officers, and allied health care professionals – to share your experiences with us for our series on the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Many health care workers in Malaysia’s public health service have lamented that while they were once hailed as heroes during the pandemic, their sacrifices have now been forgotten and their welfare abandoned.
It is important for Malaysia to remember the Covid-19 pandemic, not treat it as a nightmare that faded with the break of dawn.
Please email your article in Word document format to codeblue@galencentre.org by February 16, 2025. The email subject should be: Submission for 5th Covid Anniversary Series.
If you have any suitable photographs for use with your essay, please email it in an attachment in high-res format. (If you don’t have photos, that’s fine).
For submissions from health workers in the public service, CodeBlue can publish those on an anonymous basis.
However, in your email, please include your real name, your position, and where you’re currently serving. CodeBlue will not disclose your identity to any other third party, but it’s our policy to know who exactly is writing to us before we publish anonymous contributions.
For health care professionals in the private sector or for those who have already left Malaysia’s public health service since the Covid-19 outbreak began, please go on the record for your op-ed. If you want to be anonymous, please state in your email why you’re requesting anonymity.
These are the guidelines for your op-ed. You may write in either English or Bahasa Malaysia; we will publish your article in the language it’s written.
- Between 800 to 1,200 words.
- Include a title (CodeBlue will check with you first if we want to suggest amendments to the title of your op-ed).
- Include a stand-first, i.e. short one-sentence paragraph below the title that will also be used as the Facebook or X caption (CodeBlue will check with you first if we want to suggest amendments to the stand-first).
- Include a pseudonym (if you’re currently working in the civil service).
If there are any substantive amendments that CodeBlue would like to make to your essay (aside from minor edits for style or grammar), we will check with you first prior to publication.
Below are some guiding questions for your essay. We don’t expect you to answer these questions point by point in your op-ed; it’s just for guidance, you’re free to write beyond your answers to the questions. Please be as detailed as possible in your essay.
- What was your position/ where were you serving at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022)?
- What was your role/ what did you do as part of Malaysia’s Covid response?
- Can you tell us about anything that happened during the pandemic or the Covid response in Malaysia that was not previously known in the public domain?
- How have things changed for you over the last few years since the Covid outbreak began in Malaysia?
- What were the lessons that you personally learned, or that Malaysia or the world should learn from the Covid pandemic?
Thank you in advance for sharing your story with CodeBlue and Malaysia at large.
