Meet the Malayali nurse who administered the COVID vaccine to Sheikh Mohammed

When Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, tweeted a photo of himself receiving the Covid-19 vaccine, little did we know that it was Sossamma Mathew, a Dubai-based Indian nurse, who administered the dose.

Khaleej Times reported the veteran nurse’s special call that helped her meet the Ruler of Dubai.

“I always wanted to meet Sheikh Mohammed. And God fulfilled my wish. It was a blessed moment. I can’t express my feelings. I am very lucky,” she told the Gulf daily.

Sossamma was part of the four-member medical team, which went to Sheikh Mohammed’s Majlis after being tested Covid-19 negative. She said Sheikh Mohammed asked them about their well-being and praised the exceptional work done by the frontline health workers.

Sossamma works as a staff nurse at the Preventive Medicine department under the Ministry of Health and Prevention.

This was not the time she was administering jabs to distinguished personalities in the UAE. In September, Sossamma administered the vaccine to AbdulRahman bin Mohammed Al Owais, Minister of Health and Prevention.

She gets picked for the job because the injections she gives does not cause pain. So she was always selected to administer flu and vaccine jabs to ministers, heads of federal departments, undersecretaries and VIPs.

Sossamma , who has been in Dubai since 1992, resides here with husband Vaidyanparambil Abraham Kuriakose and son Jubin who work in Dubai. She hails from Meenadom village of Kottayam district.

Her family as well as Meenadom neighbours are happy about the rare opportunity she has got.

Sossamma is now looking forward to administering the second dose to Sheikh Mohammed.

She has two wishes now – to administer a vaccine to Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, and to give a vaccine dose to a VIP at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building she has not had the opportunity to enter.