It’s corona all around, other patients suffer from lack of treatment

Mangalore Today News Network

Bengaluru, April 12, 2020: As the country focuses excessively on COVID, non-COVID patients face doom if an effective strategy is not put in place soon, say healthcare professionals.

The country has adopted a substitution strategy, where beds are created in hospitals by stopping other services like elective surgeries and discharging stable patients, said Dr Ravikant Singh of Doctors for You.

“But this will not solve the problem as 80,000 pregnant mothers deliver every day. We are a diabetic capital of the world and have many with cardiac disease. Without proper care, they are more susceptible to COVID-19,” he said referring to the Ebola crisis in African countries, where exclusive focus on the disease stopped routine immunisation, he said that research later showed that more children died of vaccine-related preventable diseases than Ebola.

Dr Prabhakaran D, Director, Centre for Chronic Disease Control, said, “We also need to protect citizens who do not have COVID-like infections. People are not getting healthcare for other problems now.”

Viren Shetty, Executive Director and Group COO, Narayana Health, said, “We are operating only about one-third of services. Some of the surgeries have been postponed. Even people are not coming in because of transport problems.”

Dr C Ramachandra, Director, Kidwai Memorial Institute Of Oncology, said there is a 90 per cent revenue loss.

“We have not been taking up elective cancer surgeries of breast and thyroid. But we are continuing with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We had 650 inpatients, but we have brought it down to 100. Because of the dip in revenues, it is becoming a problem to pay salaries.”

Dr Manish Rai, Hospital Director, Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road, said, “We are catering to our patients and have been in touch through teleconsultation. We are giving door delivery of medicines and pain management for those who have undergone surgery recently.”

Courtesy: Indian Express