BENGALURU: Frontline healthcare professionals, who have been identified to treat COVID-19 patients, do not get to see their families for three weeks in a month. They work on a roster; six hours duty for seven days, after which they are in selfquarantine for two weeks. If they don’t show symptoms of COIVID-19, they can go home to be with their families, after which they are back on the roster.

“They are precious assets of the country, and their services should be used judiciously for non COVID-19 work,” Dr S Sachchdinand, vicechancellor, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), said. He said that a list of doctors and nurses, who are willing to work in patient areas, has been drawn up for the state. “It is their job to work in ICU and isolation wards, but it’s not easy to wear personal protection equipment (PPE) for six hours a day, during which they can’t even attend nature’s call.

Some of them start getting exhausted by the fourth day,” said the V-C. On Karnataka’s preparedness to deal with a spike in cases, Dr Sachchdinand said the government has prepared itself well to meet with any exigencies. “Based on experiences of other countries on dealing with the spike in cases, and the time it takes for the virus to explode in the community, the government has drawn up a contingency plan of the expected number of healthcare professionals, PPEs, masks, beds, isolation wards and ventilators. There is no shortage of PPEs,” he said. The V-C said that the 21-day lockdown has been a “positive move, though it is still too early to make a fair assessment of the spread of infection.

One has to watch from April 5 to April 10 for better understanding of the impact of the lockdown on the infection in India. The RGUHS will train 25,000 healthcare professionals online — from doctors and nurses to other allied experts. “We are enlisting the help of undergraduate and post graduate medical students to work as volunteers in the field of surveillance, contact tracing, data collection and health education. These students are tech-savvy and their services will be a great help,” he said. As a word of caution, Dr Sachchdinand said that doctors from other disciplines should refrain from prescribing medicines for the virus since there is no medical treatment available, as of now. The media should also be cautious in highlighting alternative cures as they can mislead people,” said Dr Sachchdinand. “Follow WHO and government health guidelines,” he added.

DR S SACCHIDANAND
Vice Chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences