Doctors stress need for early diagnosis, wait for nod to start plasma therapy

Mangaluru: Amid mounting Covid-19 cases in the coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi, doctors are increasingly looking for feasible solutions to arrest its spread. At the Wenlock Hospital, doctors are awaiting approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to start plasma therapy for Covid-19 patients, with 10 donors having consented to donate plasma, said in-charge district health officer Dr Ratnakar.
The officer pointed to the problems confronting the department of health and family welfare owing to the stigma associated with Covid-19, which had resulted in several patients trying to conceal their symptoms. “If we start treatment early, complications can be taken care of easily. In many cases, patients approach doctors only when they have difficulty in breathing, and when we admitted them, we had to shift them immediately to the ICU,” Dr Ratnakar said.
Stigma worsens situation
Dr Sandeep Samethadka Nayak, a physician of internal medicine in California in the United States of America, said that prevalence of misconceptions about the pandemic was among the reasons why many Covid-19 patients were falling prey to quackery. Calling for concerted efforts to battle the stigma associated with the pandemic, Dr Nayak said, “When I was practicing in Puttur, many patients would ask me not to disclose their illnesses to others. Such fears still persist among the people, and one way to resolve it is to break down complicated facts and concepts into simple language and make them understand.”
Jimmy Xavier, a radio jockey with Radio Mirchi in Bengaluru, recently donated plasma to help with the efforts against the pandemic. “Stigma remains a roadblock in the fight against Covid-19. People who have the infection appear to labour under guilt of inconveniencing others. For many patients, the opinion of others appears to matter more than their own life,” Xavier said.
Dr Supriya Hegde Aroor, psychiatrist and professor at Father Muller Medical College Hospital, said that it was fear that was driving the culture of ostracism. “Some people have started to think along the lines of ‘Will I die alone because of Covid?’, ‘Will I be stuffed in a PPE and laid to rest?’ This results in people not talking about the disease freely, and worsens the situation,” she said.
Associate professor in the department of psychiatry, Yenepoya Medical College Dr Ravichandra Karkal pondered over the contradictory response of a large section of the public to reports of Amitabh Bachchan contracting the virus, for whose recovery many people started praying, which stood in stark contrast to the callous stance they adopted on learning of a neighbour testing positive for the novel coronavirus. “Stigma creates a sense of shame and the person with the disease is dehumanised. We need to also see that many people are recovering from the infection. This was once the problem associated with tuberculosis, HIV and many mental health problems too,” Dr Karkal said.