Miss England swaps beauty crown for hospital gown amid pandemic
Miss England 2019, Bhasha Mukherjee, has returned to her lucrative medical career in trade for her crown in order to help those impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.
The 24-year-old winner told CNN she was returning to her career in the UK after coming back from doing humanitarian work as Miss England abroad. She is returning to her job as a junior doctor at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Eastern England – which she held before she won the crown.
“I felt a sense of this is what I’d got this degree for and what better time to be part of this particular sector than now,” she explained on Monday.
According to John Hopkins University data, the United Kingdom currently has 56,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19, as of Tuesday morning.
Mukherjee says her initial plans to act as an ambassador for a number of charities throughout countries including Turkey, India and Pakistan quickly had to quickly be given up after receiving messages from her former colleagues about the dire situation currently taking place in England.
“When you are doing all this humanitarian work abroad, you’re still expected to put the crown on, get ready ... look pretty,” she said.
For her, there is no better time to step back from her crown and help the country in its time of need.
“Health care staff are risking their lives for us, so let’s risk our mere leisure for a little while to say thank you to them,” Mukherjee wrote in support of the U.K’s National Health Service.
Mukherjee says being a doctor requires her to be as creative as possible in relation to speaking to patients and “trying to convince them of taking their medication or doing a certain treatment.”
“That’s where the art comes in, you see,” she explained.
“That’s where the humanities and all the communication skills come in. And that was very exciting for me.”
Mukherjee told CNN she is placing herself under quarantine for two weeks before she returns to her medical profession, but stated she is prepared and readily awaiting the new challenge that she is soon to face.