No doctor had ever imagined facing a deadly virus like Corona. It is not a simple virus and it can’t be conquered so easily. With no definitive treatment in sight, its complications are proving fatal and baffling the medical fraternity. Certain Covid-19 patients have died within 24 hours even after turning negative, and getting discharged from the hospital. The virus is also presenting in unusual ways in many patients. Without any respiratory symptoms, some Covid-19 patients are coming up with skin rashes and their CT scan reveals severe Covid-19 changes. The virus is showing its presence in the human body through various atypical manifestations. Doctors are dazed. It’s a shocking situation.
Given this scenario, public perception regarding Covid-19 has to change. Unlike any common disease experienced during a lifetime, this infectious disease is dangerously disguised. Apart from respiratory symptoms, this illness has wide-ranging symptoms and signs. Despite a good recovery rate, its mortality rate is quite high. Elderly people and patients with co-morbidities experience an intense form of the disease. In addition to the quick deterioration of apparently stable patients, there are reports of sudden Covid-19 deaths. Even with the ventilator support, the patients can experience a sudden decline in oxygen saturation level in the blood, followed by abrupt death.
Of course, it’s difficult for people to accept the serious complications and unexpected death of their loved ones. But this is the harsh reality we need to accept given the way this virus is invading us. Likewise, it’s now extremely essential that the prognosis, complications and high-risk nature of this disease are explained to the patients and their attendants. Public needs to understand the difference between medical negligence and medical misfortune.
Had Covid-19 been not so insidious, its mortality rate in developed nations with highly sophisticated health infrastructure would not have been so huge. If it was only about getting admitted with a doctor attending the patient round-the-clock, a senior doctor at SKIMS attending his mother won’t have lost her to this lethal virus. All the same, precarious and sudden complications of this disease can’t exonerate medics for not doing their best in managing these patients. This is the time when people need them the most.
People should realize that healthcare warriors here are fearlessly fighting the horrific Covid-19. They are mandated to work for long hours with inadequate medical infrastructure and compromised protection. Many of them have purchased certain protective equipment on their own. It is not easy to wear 2 to 3 layers of PPE during scorching weather and get drowned in sweat for hours together. Many cases of healthcare workers falling in a faint while managing Covid-19 patients remain unreported.
Death-defying coronavirus can’t be just clubbed under ‘occupational hazard’ for frontline medical warriors; rather it is a potential life threat for them and their families. They don’t only risk their lives but imperil the lives of their families too while managing Covid-19 patients. A senior doctor working in periphery lost his mother to Covid-19 without letting him enough time to shift her to the hospital. She died at home and was buried unheard, during the dead of night. The son (doctor) is still in a state of shock for contracting the virus to his mother. Many healthcare workers have contracted the virus while on duty and, in certain cases, transmitted it to their close relatives. Some doctors are silently battling for their own lives in different hospitals.
Of course, there are certain aberrational instances where doctors fail in their duties. But exceptions don’t make a rule. More so, when majority of frontline workers struggle to give their best within the scant resources by risking their lives. People here continue to have faith in their healthcare providers. Aberrations need not be generalised. Kashmir cannot afford it right now.
Moreover, it seems unreasonable to pitch up a confrontation with healthcare workers for administrative issues. We should understand that frontline workers are accountable for medical treatment. The availability of oxygen, medicines, equipments etc., is the responsibility of the hospital administration. How unruly to heckle a doctor or a nurse for power failure in a ward or unclean washrooms in the facility!
Bottomline: UT administration in general and hospital administrations, in particular, must plug the crucial holes that render medical fraternity vulnerable to attacks from both coronavirus and people. We must question administration for massive policy screwup besides lack of sufficient oxygen beds, medicines, proper PPEs, and hygienic food for patients. Above all, people also need to ponder and ask why Kashmir is facing such a startlingly scary onslaught of Covid-19 in comparison to Jammu region given the fact that both the divisions are administered by the same government.