KHAMMAM: A frontline Covid-19 warrior, admitted to a quarantine centre, ran away from there, unable to go through a living nightmare. Anne Srinivasa Rao, founder of Annem Seva Samithi, took an initiative in ensuring the burial or cremation of 30 bodies of those who died of Covid-19 but when he himself became a victim of Coronavirus, there was none at the quarantine centre to take care of his needs. Rao contracted Coronavirus while helping the kin of those who died of Covid-19 perform the last rites of their loved ones. When his condition became critical, he got himself admitted to Maddulapalli quarantine centre. According to him, cleanliness is the last thing that one should look for at the centre.
There are no staff to clean up the wet garbage that piles up quickly in the centre and no one bothers when it begins stinking. The doctors rarely visit the patients. The quarantine centre was inaugurated by Transport Minister P Ajay Kumar and at that time he promised to make the centre an ideal one with all facilities. The Health Department admitted about 50 patients to the quarantine centre after its inauguration.
That is when the agonising ordeal of the patients began. Last Friday, when Rao arrived at the centre he had not imagined that being at the quarantine centre would turn out to be a nightmare. At the seedy quarantine centre, there is no supply of clean drinking water and in toilets too there is no supply of water and as a result they stink.
The food supplied to the patients is revolting, he said. When Rao raised the issue with officials, they advised that if he did not like the ambience, he was free to leave and be in home isolation, which was what he had done to protect himself from the centre. “The doctors did not treat us as human beings. They did not have even one word of sympathy for us our predicament. We were left to our fate,” he said.