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Bhagalpur:
Guards armed with rifles escort Dr cKumar Gaurav as he makes the rounds at his hospital on the banks of the Ganges River.
The guards are there to guard him from the kin of sufferers, together with these affected by COVID-19. The kin maintain barging into the wards, even the ICU, to stroke and feed their family members, usually with out sporting even the flimsiest of masks as boundaries towards the novel coronavirus.
“If we stop them, they get angry,” he says. “They want to give homemade meals to their patients, and some even want to massage their patients. And they are taking the infections from our ICUs to the other people in the society.”
He stops to inform the spouse of a affected person within the ICU she should depart. She obeys, solely to return after a couple of minutes from one other entrance.
It’s the monsoon season, and the humidity is reaching insufferable ranges. But the few air conditioners within the hospital aren’t working, and a few kin use hand followers to maintain their family members cool in wards soiled with rubbish and discarded protecting gear.
It wasn’t imagined to be like this for Mr Kumar.
Nine years in the past, the 42-year-old psychiatrist moved his household again to his hometown for a quieter life and higher pay after three years in Delhi. He accepted a job as a medical professor and advisor psychiatrist on the 900-bed Jawahar Lal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, named after the nation’s first prime minister. Life was uneventful however rewarding, spent educating courses and visiting his psychiatry sufferers.
Now, with some docs struck down by the coronavirus and others refusing to work, he has been named the highest official on the hospital, regardless of being one in all its most junior consultants – and affected by diabetes and hypertension, two danger components for extreme COVID-19.
But he says he felt compelled to volunteer for the job.
“A lot of my colleagues refused,” he says. “I had to take up the responsibility.”
In April, because the pandemic struck right here in Bihar, the hospital was chosen as one in all simply 4 COVID-dedicated hospitals for a inhabitants of 100 million individuals – not less than in idea.
In observe, Mr Kumar says the closest hospital with correct critical-care amenities is round 200 kilometers (120 miles) away. And with correct healthcare within the surrounding rural areas troublesome to search out, basic sufferers have nowhere else to go however his hospital.
In June, Mr Kumar says, the district administration instructed the hospital to deal with uninfected sufferers, too.
“In an ideal world, there should not be any non-COVID patients in this hospital,” Mr Kumar says.
The healthcare system in Bhagalpur, like many different components of Bihar, is on the breaking point, he says.
Interviews with dozens of employees, sufferers and kin on the hospital paint an image of situations that may shock these accustomed to pictures of hermetically sealed ICUs in the course of the pandemic, with kin not even allowed to the touch their dying family members.
They inform of a continual scarcity of manpower and assets corresponding to blood and medicines. All 37 beds within the ICU are occupied; on the ground subsequent to one of many beds, a relative sits on a brightly coloured blanket he has introduced from dwelling, a water bottle by his facet.
Mr Kumar says he feels powerless to forestall the lapses in isolation of the COVID sufferers.
“We don’t know who is positive and who is negative,” the psychiatrist says. “We don’t know their status and we cannot wait for them to be tested. They just need the treatment. We are the most vulnerable population.”
Mr Kumar watched instances within the district slowly rise over a variety of months, however the name to take over the operating of the hospital final month got here all of the sudden. The earlier hospital superintendent had examined constructive for the virus, and to Kumar’s shock, he says among the extra senior docs refused the submit. Attempts to get remark from the docs have been unsuccessful, however lower-ranking docs on the hospital confirmed Kumar’s account, and an official letter from the earlier superintendent cited one of many refusals.
He considered his prolonged household, whom he stopped visiting because the virus started to unfold by the district. Who would run the hospital in the event that they have been admitted, if not him?
“For the people of Bhagalpur and nearby districts, it was my responsibility,” he says. “That is why I raised my hand.”
There have been round 87,000 confirmed instances of coronavirus within the state and 465 deaths – comparatively small in comparison with different states. Given the low testing ranges within the state, the numbers could also be conservative. Still, Bihar’s healthcare system is already near breaking level, in contrast to locations corresponding to New Delhi, which has had many extra instances however enjoys higher assets.
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