It is a triple curse to be sick in these days of lockdowns. Access to medical facilities is constrained by lockdown measures. If accessed, patients face the unfortunate prospect of suffering ~ even dying ~ without the succour of their loved ones. But the third, and possibly worst curse, is to be pushed down the medical profession’s priorities as the country’s hospitals prepare for medical crises that may well be on the way by ignoring those that are already upon us.
The death of a patient in a Delhi hospital who was reportedly on a ventilator but was asked to seek medical help elsewhere because the facility had been earmarked for those afflicted by Covid-19 was tragic. So too is the plight of patients in Mumbai, pushed out of the care of a hospital to the space under a flyover because their need for care is deemed less pressing than that of virus patients.
To earmark entire hospitals or large parts of them for Covid-19 patients sounds wonderful. But the provisioning must match need and not be disproportionate as sometimes appears to be the case. For instance, Delhi according to a health bulletin issued over the weekend had 577 positive Covid-19 patients and 2,156 beds earmarked for virus cases in government hospitals (a further 285 were in private hospitals).
It had 42 people in Intensive Care Units, of whom 24 were in private hospitals, and seven on ventilators, of whom six were in private facilities. Further, it had 20 patients on oxygen of whom 11 were in private hospitals. Even after admitting patients who had not tested positive, and who could well have been sequestered elsewhere pending results of their tests, designated government hospitals had nearly 700 beds lying empty.
While it is important to plan for rapid spread of the virus, care must be taken to scale up facilities progressively so that those suffering from other ~ equally serious and potentially far more life-threatening ~ diseases are not shunted out or left to fend for themselves. Large metropolises attract patients from catchment areas that go beyond city limits.
Thus, those who visit city hospitals for care of chronic ailments but cannot go home because of the lockdown, must also be cared for. They cannot, as has been reported from across the country, be treated as children of a lesser God. Even before Covid-19 visited us, most government hospitals were chronically overcrowded.
Two and even three patients sometimes shared a single bed, and thousands were treated on hospital floors. While every state has sought to earmark at least one government hospital in a district for Covid-19 patients, the other maladies haven’t gone away. If anything, those medical conditions may well have become accentuated in the absence of access and the inability of overworked healthcare professionals to monitor them as they ought to be.
A nation cannot overlook its commitment to healthcare of all citizens. Death from cancer or a heart attack are as tragic as that from a virus, and more if they occur from neglect.