In 2017, Caroline Fiat made history when she became the first health aide ever elected to France’s National Assembly. But in recent weeks, the forty-three-year-old has been back at her old job, as she joins the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. Since late March, the left-wing MP has worked full time in a coronavirus ward at a public hospital in her native département of Meurthe-et-Moselle, in eastern France — one of the country’s hardest-hit areas.

“It’s where I belong,” the deputy from the left-populist party La France Insoumise (LFI) told Jacobin shortly after starting work in the hospital. “We’re in the middle of a health crisis, and we need people.”

At least three other legislators with medical backgrounds in France’s National Assembly and Senate have signed up to help fight the pandemic, mobilizing through the government’s “health reserve” force.