Assam: With no govt guidelines, private nursing homes in a quandary

Prabin Kalita | TNN | May 4, 2020, 20:56 IST

Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma (ANI photo)

GUWAHATI: After Assam government allowed the re-opening of private medical clinics and OPDs from Monday in green zone districts, private nursing homes fear that without government guidelines on pre-surgery or pre-hospitalistaion screening of patients for Covid-19, the lives of doctors and nursing staff stand compromised together with their families as well as patients and their attendants.
The Indian Medical Association Assam State Branch has written a letter to health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma seeking his immediate intervention to either facilitate the patients coming to private hospitals get themselves tested before surgery or hospitalization or allow the private establishments to start Covid-19 testing on their own.
“IMA requests the Government of Assam to please arrange for pre-intervention, pre-surgery screening of those cases in existing testing set-ups or allowing serological viral screening in coordination with ICMR,” the IMA stated in its letter to Sarma.
“All health establishments will adhere to routine screening for fever and contact history, hand hygiene etc., but for the cases requiring surgeries or intervention, some sort of testing to rule out Covid-19 is required for the safety of patient, doctors, health care workers and their families,” the association said.
“It has already been seen that many doctors and health care workers have been found positive resulting in quarantining not only personnel, but hospitals too, and few doctors have lost lives too while rendering services in non-Covid scenario,” the association added.
The IMA said that “responsibility of negligence will also come if the patient is found to be Covid-positive later on. Moreover the already immune compromised patient will be subjected to added co-morbidity with an elective surgery, or a post-surgery febrile or sore-throat episode will invite a lot of questions and an environment of worries and fear.”
It added that considering the complete infection prevention and control (IPC) protocols in such patients, it was not practically possible to provide PPEs for all people involved in such cases in operation theatres and wards till the patient is discharged, because of financial and supply constraints.
“If PPE are used for such cases, who will bear the cost of those expensive suits for all health care workers involved in a case, and also their disposal and how do we procure the PPEs, as these are presently not available in the open market,” the association asked. It suggested that state government could facilitate the healthcare institutions to have those PPEs free of cost or in subsidized rates.