Rural India has been hit hard by the second wave of Covid 19

The already poor healthcare system is overwhelmed in rural-tribal India

HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/INDIA

The already poor healthcare system is overwhelmed in rural-tribal India especially in  states like Chhattisgarh(CG), MP, Odisha, Bihar, UP, says Dr Pandurang Giri, a family physician at Shaheed Hospital in Balod district, Chhattisgarh.

With an acute shortage of critical care specialists and ICU beds even at the district level, providing critical and emergency care during the pandemic has been a  huge challenge. ''Many District Hospitals of Chhatisgarh are newly built. They are not equipped with the manpower or resources to handle the situation. Poor testing, lack of awareness and fearodeath has added to the woes of rural India,'' says Giri.  ''We are the only hospital in Balod district to provide both Covid and non-covid emergency care in the district. We run a 50-bed Covid ward for providing care to all age group people including pregnant women. District hospital and nearby Community Health Centers(CHCs) had to  focus on Covid related care and vaccination and due to this non covid patient suffered a lot. District hospital in Balod even referred patients to us for all emergency Ceasarians and many of the Covid positive deliveries. But the capacity of the healthcare system in rural areas was stretched to its limits during the pandemic  patients and poor suffered a lot,'' he adds.

Shaheed Hospital has been reeling under infrastructural problems. ''We are running High dependency Unit (HDU) but we also don’t have internal medicine or critical care expert officially. Our emergency care ward had patients with breathing difficulty likely Covid as well as pregnancy with raised BP, seizures, Post- delivery hemorrhage, severe anemia, snake bite and poisonings etc. We just have some Family physicians and general physicians to take care of them.  We don't have trained nurses to manage and serve sick patients as well as we also have poor nurse- patients ratio,'' says Giri. Physician are expected to act rapidly and they cannot afford much time just history taking. ''Sometimes, we have to stabilize patients simultaneously along with noting history from relatives,'' says Giri. 

Many deaths were preventable, says Giri. ''Some patients had symptoms which mimicked  simple flue and  so remained untested and untreated and the symptoms got worsened acutely in home. It is very tough for us to handle such situations on emotional level.''

Giri hopes that the lessons learnt from the second wave will help us set things right as we prepare for the third wave.