CHENNAI: If Tamil Nadu has achieved the rare feat of containing COVID– which even developed Western nations are grappling to deal with – it’s largely because of the role played by a government hospital in Chennai, which acted as one of the nerve-centres for COVID care – the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH).
Countless people at this facility – from doctors to sanitary workers – put their lives at risk to pull Chennai out from the clutches of the pandemic.
What kept these workers going? Day after day; month after month; for almost an entire year?
“We endured tremendous amounts of mental and physical fatigue,” says N Gopalakrishnan, director of the Institute of Nephrology at RGGGH.
“But, the realisation that we are in this profession, and that we need to play our part, kept us going.” At one point, Chennai was recording 2,500 fresh cases every day, and a majority of that went to RGGGH. At its peak, the hospital handled 1,804 in-patients.
Daily deaths were in double digits.
Now, the numbers have plunged to 100 in-patients and zero deaths.
“Being a tertiary institution, we cannot drive away any patient. We had to give them the best treatment, no matter what,” says Gopalakrishnan.
The patients at RGGGH were not just from Chennai but also from its neighbouring districts.
E Theranirajan, dean of the hospital, said from ensuring the availability of beds to human resource planning, the doctors came up with various strategies to handle the pandemic right from the beginning.
More than 200 doctors, several healthcare workers, and technicians were involved in the process, he added.
“The doctors were sensitised to the treatment and we took online classes and virtually trained them,” he said.
He noted that for many doctors, it was also a traumatising experience as they were not visiting their families and stayed at the hospital.
Armed with tech
Gopalakrishnan says the hospital had purchased mobile phones for every block with WhatsApp in them.
“All reports were coming through the phone and, hence, communication became easy,” he added, pointing out that they had a pre-intimation phone number, on which they got information of patients before they arrived at the hospital.
This helped them prepare well in advance. The hospital also had six battery-operated cars, which had the facility to supply oxygen as well.
“It gave round-the-clock service, providing hassle-free transit,” he observed.
The doctors also ensured daily counselling for family members who could not see their kin admitted.
“We carried messages for them and allowed a few family members to see their loved ones, wearing full PPE kit.”
The hospital also introduced ‘feeding nurses’ who would give food to elderly patients.
Apart from manpower training and psychological counselling, upping the infrastructure was the biggest achievement, said the dean.
“Starting with 10 beds in March, the hospital now has 1,668 beds. Tower 3 was made into a COVIDward with the availability of multi-speciality doctors,” recalls Gopalakrishnan.
Zero-delay COVID ward
Theranirajan says COVID ward helped reduce deaths.
“In this ward, doctors gave treatment to any patient with poor oxygen to improve his/her oxygen levels. The condition of walking hypoxia was addressed here,” he said.
He also said that setting up the zero-delay COVIDward by the hospital ensured in reducing the deaths.
“We have so far done 30,000 CT scans, 40,000 X-rays, and processed 4.5 lakh COVIDswabs. All these were done free of cost.” Doctors said the hospital even had oxygen cylinder connections in the toilets.
The dean added that the government ensured the availability of drugs like Tocilizumab, low-molecular heparin, Remdisivir, among many others.
Gopalakrishnan says that a daily mortality analysis was done to find out if there was any scope for bettering the treatment.
“The hospital has also performed dialysis to a total of 640 Covid-19 positive patients so far. It was challenging as patients with kidney diseases are at high risk for Covid,” he said.
Due to the experience in treating many Covid-19 patients, RGGGH doctors were also called for the monthly expert meeting chaired by Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on discussing extension of lockdown and other measures.
After all these measures, the hospital now records deaths mostly between zero to two per day.
It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that RGGGH launched a blitzkrieg of a medical attack on the virus to bring it to its knees.