The Covid positivity rate has slackened by around 5% in Madhya Pradesh over the past ten days, but the healthcare system is still under immense pressure, say experts. Two reports from far-flung districts have exposed the failings.
In a video that has gone viral, a woman sub-inspector of police Adriyana Bhagat is inconsolable after her husband Kamlesh Bhagat, a revenue staffer, died on the floor of a hospital in Ashoknagar district on Wednesday morning.
The police officer said that she kept crying for a ventilator bed for her husband, but no one listened. He was low on oxygen and was coughing, she said, adding that when her husband was brought to the hospital, his oxygen level was around 50%, but he wasn’t given a bed.
Later, the ailing man was given an injection and was offered an oxygen cylinder, but no one came back to attend to him afterwards, alleged the bereaved family.
Police officers reached the spot, consoled the officer and sent her husband’s body for cremation.
Superintendent of police, Ashoknagar, Raghuwansh Bhadauria termed the incident tragic and said anyone found guilty would be punished.
Another shocking image has emerged from a remote village, Dhaniyakhedi, in Agar Malwa district where a group of ailing people, suspected to have Covid, are being treated by private practitioners (allegedly quacks) under trees on farmland.
As most hospital beds are often full, many locals are getting treated in the open, with drip bottles hanging from tree branches and patients lying on the ground.
The block medical officer, Dr Manish Kuril, said that action is being taken against such irresponsible medical practitioners, and physicians in the area have been asked to offer proper medical advice.
Over 1.25 lakh fresh cases of Covid have been detected from April 25 to May 4 in Madhya Pradesh. The active cases have been hovering around 89,000 for a while. The positivity rate is around 18%, an alarming one as per WHO norms, but it has slumped by about 5% in past few days, say experts.
Jabalpur has shown a recovery rate of 112%, Bhopal 111% and Indore 97%. In the past 24 hours, 12,319 fresh cases have been recorded in the state.
But, in a troubling development, the junior doctors’ association in the state on Thursday announced a strike, stopping services in non-Covid facilities. The association threatened that Covid-19 services could be discontinued if its demands were not met. These include an 18% hike in stipend, a one-year tuition fee waiver in lieu of Covid-19 services and fresh recruitments for dealing with the dearth of physicians in the state. The junior doctors said that despite their relentless services, resident doctors often have to run around for beds in case they contract the infection. “We have in the past raised demands, but every time we get assurances and nothing concrete happens," the JDA said.
(With inputs from Rajneesh Sethi in Agar Malwa)
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