On most mornings, Hindumbi Kaurom Kakkada still walks into the wards of Government Indira Gandhi Hospital in Kavaratti, ready for a shift that has continued, in one form or another, for 53 years.
She is 80-years-old, and by any ordinary measure, her career should have ended when she first retired two decades ago. Instead, her name now sits among the Top 10 finalists of the Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award 2026, chosen from more than 134,000 nurses across 214 countries.
For a woman who once ferried patients between Lakshadweep’s islands by fishing boat, recognition has finally arrived on the world stage, decades after most of her patients had already stopped thinking of her work as anything unusual.
A career shaped by scarcity
Hindumbi was born and raised in Kavaratti, in a family with deep roots in India’s freedom movement. Her father took part in the Dandi March alongside Mahatma Gandhi, and she grew up watching a generation that believed service came before comfort.
She trained as a nurse at Kozhikode Medical College, at a time when leaving the islands for an education meant long, uncertain sea journeys.
When she returned home, Lakshadweep’s healthcare system was still in its infancy. Emergency patients were often moved between islands in fishing boats or naval vessels, and even essential medicines had to be sourced from Kochi on the mainland.
Hindumbi trained as a theatre nurse and worked through those early gaps herself, at one point transporting a patient by fishing boat while administering a blood transfusion, and conducting a forceps delivery during a monsoon, when reaching a hospital in time was simply not possible.
From fishing boats to hospital wards, Hindumbi has spent over five decades bringing healthcare to Lakshadweep’s remote islands. Photograph: (YourStory)
There was no backup team to call in such moments, and no second attempt if something went wrong. She learnt, early on, to work with whatever the sea and the weather allowed that day.
More than 20,000 lives touched
Over 53 years, Hindumbi has supported more than 20,000 surgeries and emergency cases, often working through shortages of staff, equipment and transport.
Beyond the operating theatre, she encouraged institutional deliveries across the islands, persuading women to give birth in hospitals rather than at home, alongside immunisation drives, hygiene awareness campaigns and preventive healthcare outreach.
She also contributed to containing a cholera outbreak on the islands, and stayed on duty through two very different crises: the 2004 tsunami and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hindumbi once administered a blood transfusion to a patient aboard a fishing boat—one of many emergencies she handled when medical transport was scarce Photograph: (YourStory)
Many residents of Lakshadweep still remember her today as the nurse who was present at their birth, or who stood by their family during a medical emergency.
When she formally retired at 60, the break lasted barely three months before she returned as a contract nurse, unwilling to step away from a community she had served for most of her adult life. She remains in that role today.
A national honour turns global
In 2023, the President of India recognised Hindumbi’s contribution at the highest national level, conferring on her the Florence Nightingale Award, India’s top honour for nurses. That recognition has now been followed by something considerably bigger.
In May 2026, Aster DM Healthcare announced her as one of 10 finalists for the Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award, a prize instituted to recognise nurses working in some of the world’s most geographically isolated regions and difficult healthcare settings.
After retiring at 60, Hindumbi returned to work within three months as a contract nurse, continuing to serve the community she had cared for all her life. Photograph: (WomenShine)
Selected through a three-stage evaluation process overseen by Ernst & Young as independent process advisors, the finalists were drawn from a record pool of applicants across every continent, making Hindumbi’s presence on the list a rare distinction for a nurse from India’s smallest union territory.
Azad Moopen, the award’s founder chairman, said nurses’ commitment, dedication and compassion make them the backbone of healthcare systems across the world.
One of the 10 finalists will receive the grand title and a prize of US$250,000, while the rest, Hindumbi included, will receive global recognition for their work. The winner will be announced later this year at a ceremony being held in New Delhi.
For Hindumbi, the outcome may matter less than the fact that, at 80, she remains the person Lakshadweep’s islanders call on first.
Five decades after she began her career navigating boats between islands with no hospital in sight, her work has quietly become part of a much larger story about what nursing looks like at the edges of the world, far from where such recognition usually reaches.
