DU teachers call for Covid care facility

NEW DELHI:  A group of Delhi University teachers including members of the Academic and Executive Council have written to acting Vice Chancellor (VC) demanding to develop an in-house Covid care facility in the campus for the students, teachers and employees. 

The Academic for Action and Development (AAD), a Congress-backed teachers association, said, “Many meeting have been held on these issue but nothing moved forward. We are again facing a far worse situation and hundreds of teachers and employees are running from pillar to post for a single bed in any hospital. Some of them have lost their lives and many of them are struggling. In such a situation, the University should extend its hands of care and compassion to students, teachers and employees.”

The letter further read, “The WUS Health Centres have been operational during the lockdown and we requested that their doctors and employees should be given insurance coverage of `1 crore. The situation is worse and Delhi is facing is facing a crisis of beds for corona patients and this may increase in days to come.” Rajesh Jha, member of AAD and teacher at DU said, the Delhi University can attach the university guest houses to the WUS centre and develop the facilities for Covid-infected university employees. 

Efforts should be made to develop some beds with Level-3 facility, if not more than that, he added. For this purpose, we can seek help from our own medical and nursing colleges. Many Professors of our medical colleges are involved in various state and central government committees and their expertise can guide us in developing this facility.

“We request you to take urgent sanitisation and preventive measures in our campus, develop home quarantine facilty for such employees who are residing in smaller accommodations,” it added. “Presently, arranging a bed in any hospital is a big task and lack of beds leads to death. In this direction, we can have dialogue with Delhi Government, DRDO, and other concerned departments/agencies. We have a MoU with DRDO,” said the teachers in the letter. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has also developed an in house covid care facility for its students and employees and the Delhi University should adopt it, they said.