Miss England returns to work as NHS doctor in coronavirus fight
MISS England 2019 is swapping her pageant crown for her scrubs as she returns to work as an NHS doctor during the coronavirus crisis.
After winning the crown, 24-year-old Bhasha Mukherjee planned to put her medical career on hold so she could travel the world for charity work.
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However when the pandemic worsened, she cut her India trip short and dashed home to the UK.
She said: "There's no better time for me to be Miss England and helping England at a time of need."
Bhasha was a junior doctor specialising in respiratory medicine before competing in the Miss World pageant, where she represented England, in December 2019.
After the event, she travelled to India for charity work.
However she rushed home when she heard from her former colleagues at the Pilgrim Hospital in Boston about the worsening coronavirus situation.
Her first flight was cancelled as it taxied to the runway but she worked with the British High Commission in Kolkata to find a flight from India to Frankfurt, then to London.
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Bhasha, who was born in Kolkata but moved to Derby with her parents and brother when she was nine, said: "My colleagues were telling me they are doing 13 hour shifts seven days a week and having to do night shifts too.
"When I heard that I felt so guilty...I really wanted to go back to work.
"As Miss England you are expected to wear the crown and dress up but I kept looking at the news and seeing the death toll rising in the UK, and I didn't feel like dressing up.
"I felt that my services, given the training that I've had - I'm a trained doctor - my services would be much more useful in a hospital.
"I'm not belittling the work, the charity work that I was doing, but in a way, you know, this is what I've been trained to do, so I wanted to come back and do that."
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Bhasha returned to England on Wednesday after a month in India but now has to self-isolate for two weeks before she can return to the frontline.
She said: "It was incredible the way the whole world was celebrating all key workers, and I wanted to be one of those, and I knew I could help.
"The ward that I work in is the respiratory ward, but from what I'm hearing from my colleagues, the doctors are being sort of filtered and sent wherever they're needed."
It comes as the number of coronavirus hospital deaths in the UK rose to 6,159 - a record increase of 786 in a day.
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