It has indeed been an extremely difficult year for most of us, with loosing so many colleagues, friends, and family members to COVID, we saw some heroic work from our colleagues and witnessed a health service under pressure. 

 

I cannot but extend my heartfelt thanks to all those who continued to work during the pandemic bearing significant stresses at home and at work. We must salute our hard working colleagues and other health care workers and also keep in our prayers those who paid the ultimate price delivering their services. 2020 will be remembered as the most physically and mentally taxing year in our professional lives. 

 

The successful rollout of the vaccination has indeed shown some light at the end of this dark tunnel. With a significant proportion of vulnerable population being vaccinated we can see some normality com-ing back to our way of living. There has been various challenges and vaccination of BAME communities was a big one and I must congratulate APPNE members and executives who took up this challenge in raising awareness and acceptance of vaccination in the most vulnerable population cohort. We must re-main cautious and don’t let our defences go down as we hear of the third wave, fuelled by a new variant of the virus, with increasing reports of hospitals declaring major incidents,