Indian doctors against COVID ‘overworked, stressed, scared’ | Coronavirus pandemic News

Low wages, 24-hour shifts and severe shortages of staff and protective equipment have left many doctors at the forefront of India’s wild pandemic growth for lives close to the breaking point and fear.

Coronavirus infections have killed at least 165,000 people in the vast South Asian nation (home to some of the world’s most populous cities) since April.

Although India’s recent rise in COVID-19 has slowed recently, about 3,000 people are dying every day and the chronically underfunded health care system remains under severe pressure.

“We are overwhelmed with work, stressed and very scared,” New Delhi-based doctor Radha Jain told AFP news agency.

The Indian Medical Association says more than 1,200 doctors have died since the COVID-19 pandemic began, more than 500 in the past two months.

Deependra Garg, a doctor who works outside of New Delhi, knows firsthand how serious the situation has been.

Anubha, a 48-year-old wife of the same doctor, fell ill with COVID-19 in April.

They started treatment at home but as the situation worsened, he, like so many other families, made an effort to get to the hospital bed.

He finally found one almost 200 miles from home. But the fully embedded Anubha died two weeks later, leaving her 12-year-old daughter behind.

“We are on the front lines 24/7. We suffer a high virus load but we must continue to deal with it as we choose this profession, ”Garg said.

“We have no choice.”

Underfunded and over-stretched

The pandemic has revealed structural weaknesses in India’s health system, especially in poorly equipped state hospitals.

As the latest outbreak unfolded, reports surfaced of poor hospitalization of patients lying in beds lying on the floor and packed in beds, as family members protected only by a cotton mask cared for their loved ones.

The government spends less than 2 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, one of the lowest rates in the world.

India had just 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people in 2017 – the same level as Iraq, according to the World Bank. The other two countries most affected by coronavirus, Brazil and the United States, had 2.2 and 2.6, respectively.

According to a pre-pandemic report by the U.S. Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, India needed 600,000 more doctors and two million more nurses to meet its health needs in India.

Dr Shekhar Kumar, who works with a private hospital in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said the junior staff and medical students of the last year had to work 24-hour shifts.

“Compared to last year, this time patients need longer hospital stays, which increases the burden on staff,” Kumar said.

He added that his colleagues were further prolonged when they became ill with the virus.

A doctor is waiting for a patient in an ambulance to be admitted to COVID-19 Hospital in Ahmedabad, India [File: Amit Dave/Reuters]

Doctors said they were traumatized by the choice of which patients should be saved first because they did not have an adequate supply of medicine and oxygen.

Ravikant Singh, the founder of the solidarity group that helps create the COVID-19 rural hospital, said he made an effort to sleep through the night.

“It has been a life-changing situation for doctors,” Singh told AFP.

“The worst part was … we couldn’t save a lot of lives because of the lack of oxygen.”

Even after the punishment rounds ended, doctors said they were concerned about infecting the family at home.

Kumar said he would constantly think the virus was lurking “anywhere and everywhere”.

“If doctors can’t save their lives, how will they save the lives of others?” he said.