Suspension of Healthcare for COVID19

Another Wave of COVID19 has hit Kashmir. Over the past two years, this is the third large wave of infections, and carries with it the vast advancements in testing, vaccination, management of the disease and the understanding the behavior of the Virus.

However, in Kashmir, no lessons seem to be learnt, the responses to the Wave remain the same.

The Government has issued an order to all the healthcare institutions in Kashmir to suspend what they are best at – treating patients. Instead, they have been directed to keep their wards empty, their manpower idle and wait for COVID19 patients, which the Government has assumed, are going to pile up.

While I write this piece, J&K Government has said there is 7.2 percent occupancy of the beds it has designated for COVID19 across the UT. There are 4794 COVID19 beds in J&K, level I and level II together. There are only 344 patients, out of the 17928 active cases that require admission to a hospital. The remaining 93 percent of the beds are vacant.

In the past one year, J&K Government set-up two COVID19 Hospitals with assistance from Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), one each in Jammu and Kashmir divisions. Each of these hospitals have 500 beds, with high-flow oxygen and hundreds of ventilators installed.

The hospitals have also been equipped with staff – doctors, anesthesia technicians and nurses to cater to the patient needs. Currently, at DRDO Khanmoh, the number of admissions is less than 100; 400 of its beds vacant.

At Chest Diseases Hospital, the scenario is similar, although the number of available and occupied beds is lesser.

Across district hospital, sub-district hospitals and other network of hospitals, there are hardly any patients of COVID19. In addition, there are thousands of beds that have not been allocated to COVID19 and are meant to be used for ‘routine patients’.

These patients may be suffering from ailments like kidney disease, heart ailments, broken bones; those who have cancers waiting to be detected by a vigilant doctor running tests in an OPD; patients who are losing their limbs and eye sight due to diabetes, patients who have a riot of organisms in their gastrointestinal systems, wreaking havoc, causing ulcers.

Many administrators, doctors, epidemiologists and general masses have been critical of this order. Over the middle of last year, when healthcare started opening for masses, at one single hospital in Srinagar, which had kept only its emergency department open, patients kept on pouring.

An administrator of this hospital said a few months had brought 7 lakh patients to the hospital, their treatment however partial and incomplete due to the suspension of admissions and elective surgeries.

At SKIMS Medical College Hospital, which caters to the load of patients from entire north Kashmir, lakhs of patients were treated in the few month of 2021, when the Government had taken off its label of COVID19.

SKIMS Soura forms the top level of the healthcare institutes and is a main stake for treatment of heart diseases, kidney diseases, lung diseases, infectious diseases, malignancies, endocrine disorders, neurological and other ailments.

In addition, being the only institute with a full-fledged plastic surgery department, it has reversed and prevented many disabilities in thousands of patients. Closing it down at a time when its admission of COVID19 cases is less than 50 appears ill-conceived on art of the Government.

At a private hospital, the months of lockdown and suspension of routine operations at hospitals came as a windfall. Patients requiring all kinds of surgeries, turned away from Government hospitals, had to undergo procedures at the hands of surgeons at the private hospitals. Their pockets came under duress.

All this is set to happen again.

It speaks volumes about the indispensability of healthcare facilities in these hospitals that even after the order of Divisional Commissioner, the GMC Srinagar and Directorate of Health Services Kashmir decided to run their OPDs and surgeries.

Even SKIMS Soura has been trying various means and methods to keep on catering to the patients, those for whom deferment of treatment could mean bad outcomes.

Over the past two weeks, the number of healthcare workers that are testing positive has been ‘too high’. Hundreds of staff members are getting infected, some falling sick and their families are finding themselves in this quagmire.

The safety of healthcare workers must be ensured at all costs and for that the hospitals need to put in protocols to reduce transmission in view of a highly contagious virus.

Many departments of these hospitals have shown the way in the past one year, running well with almost zero transmission. In order to save the healthcare human resource, keeping them away from patient care must not be the only way

Over the past week, the bed occupancy is no doubt increasing.

In the past four days, the occupancy has gone up by 1.5 percent in J&K. Yet, the fact that a thousands of beds are still vacant in a few hospitals that have been designated for the Pandemic is a reason enough to keep the healthcare services functional across all hospitals.