New Delhi,  As thousands of nurses across the country light the lamps of hope in the hospitals, several leading ladies play a vital role in India's war room to contain the spread of dreaded pandemic.

From developing India's first test kit for COVID-19, to despatching life saving medicines in remote areas, and from chalking out strategies for the government to tackle the spread of the virus to building treatment protocols, women from various walks of life burn midnight oil to counter the virus which is gradually spreading in world's second most populated country.

Just a day before she delivered a baby, Minal Dakhave Bhosale, a Pune based virologist, managed to deliver the first testing kit for COVID-19 to India. In just a record time of six weeks, Minal and her team including some of the best scientists gifted its first test kit to conduct COVID-19 tests at a large scale in the country, an exercise required to identify and isolate carriers of the dreaded virus.

A few kilometers away from Minal's laboratory in Pune, another virologist, Dr Priya Abraham, made an important breakthrough by isolating the virus. This breakthrough, by Dr Abraham, Director of the National Viral Institute, helps the scientists and immunologists in developing a vaccine or a drug for the treatment for new coronavirus.

Around 1500 kilometers away from Pune, in India's seat of power, New Delhi, several women bureaucrats, policy makers, health strategists, joined hands with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in chalking out strategies and initiating quick steps to prevent the country from slipping into stage 3, where disease is transmitted into communities.

Preeti Sudan, an alumni of London School of Economics, and presently the Secretary of Union Ministry of Health and Welfare, became the nodal point for the PMO to execute the key medical strategies on ground through health departments of various states."

Preeti is a workaholic. Fortunately she has rich experience of public food distribution, disaster management and PM's mega health Insurance scheme. She seems to be the fittest person to be the nodal point for coordinating the war against a pandemic, " says a 1983 batch IAS and batchmate of Preeti Sudan.