Main description:

An Australian-Indonesian nurse grapples with race, identity, belonging, and broken public health systems as she navigates family tragedy, natural disasters, and devastating viruses from Ebola in Sierra Leone to Covid-19 in the US.

In March 2020, as Covid-19 accelerated around the globe, the state of Louisiana in the United States was experiencing the fastest growth in new cases in the world. In New Orleans, the state's largest city, nurse and Australian-Indonesian expat Yanti Turang found herself at the frontlines of the worst public health crisis in American history. Recruited as the deputy medical operations manager for the state of Louisiana, Turang helped set up a 1,000-bed field hospital at a New Orleans convention centre to accommodate the overflow of Covid patients from local hospitals. Over the following months, as the world reeled from the impacts of the worst pandemic in a century, Turang and her healthcare colleagues became intimately familiar with the devastating effects of the virus, enduring a situation in which their own needs and safety were often overlooked.

Reflecting on her time working as an ER nurse throughout the coronavirus pandemic, treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, founding and running charity health organisation LearnToLive across Asia and Africa, weathering tsunamis in Indonesia and hurricanes in New Orleans, and nursing her own personal loss and heartbreak, Frontline Humans is a story of courage, generosity, hope, and resilience.