BENGALURU: Dr Kala Yadav ML’s day in the hospital may wrap up by 6 pm but the calls don’t stop pouring in until 10 pm. But as a frontline worker at the Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, which is a designated supervised isolation centre in the city, Yadav is no stranger to this tense pace of work.
Along with being in-charge of hospital infection control and biowaste management at the hospital, the 45-year-old is also a professor and in-charge of the microbiology department at Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute.
“Nobody thinks of it but this is a major aspect of a COVID-19 hospital. If the waste disposed of is not treated beforehand, it could lead to a major infection, or community transmission even,” she says solemnly.
With Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital posing as the second standby hospital in the city, Yadav explains how the facility does 20-25 screenings a day.
Currently, staff members operate on three shifts, where once team is done with their duty for a week, they are quarantined for 14 days while the next team takes over.
“Everyone is worried. Some staff members even ask me to not assign them to COVID duty, so a rotational system works best. Each one of them is given adequate training,” she explains.
As in-charge of hospital infection control, Yadav’s job involves many things, including immunisation of staff, ensuring the premises are disinfected and preparing an infection control manual for everyone to follow. The task doesn’t get easier when she returns home.
“My two daughters are at my in-law's place. Since they live in a joint family, I thought this would be better since they’d have the company of their cousins. This way, I can also isolate them and my other family members from me,” she says. But this doctor has managed to remain calm despite the gloom around her. “You don’t have time to think of this when you are in the thick of things,” she shares, adding that yoga and devotional music has come to her rescue in these times.