KOLKATA: Doctors are in the forefront of the war with the killer coronavirus and a keen young medico has travelled more than 2200 km by car in stifling PPE gear from Pune to Kolkata braving fears of infection and restrictions to movement during the country-wide lockdown to be with the people of his home state West Bengal in the time of distress.
Rohit Panda, who has recently passed MBBS from Bharati Vidyapeeth University Medical College in Pune, was unfazed with the myriad restrictions in place and travelled for over four days across five states to fulfill his dream.
He will join duty in the medicine department of the state-run S S K M Hospital in the city from next week after some formalities are completed.
"My internship in rural areas in Maharashtra was over on April 17. During my internship I could sense how fast coronavirus was spreading its tentacles in the country and the magnitude of its outbreak. I was also following the emerging situation in Bengal and I decided to join the medical fraternity in my state to be at the side of its people. However, there were procedural delays in getting an e-pass from the authorities in Maharashtra without which I could not travel," he told PTI on Wednesday.
He had applied for work in West Bengal which was granted by the state health department.
But with restrictions in place on travel , he had approached the office of the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for help on May 2.
He was granted an e-pass for inter-state travel promptly by the West Bengal health and public welfare department on that very day.
He did not waste time and set off on the arduous Pune-Kolkata road journey the very next day at 8 am before the curfew hour began in the corona-hit Maharashtra city.
He crossed the borders of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha over the next four days before reaching Kolkata on May 7.
Panda said that during his journey through the highways he saw large number of migrant labourers waiting for hours at the inter-state borders at the health screening kiosks .
"As I entered Odisha border from Andhra Pradesh I saw that hundreds of migrant labourers were made to stand in queue. There was no social distancing (an important measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus) between them. I refused to stand in the same queue and so had to wait for several hours in my car before being checked and allowed to proceed," he recalled.
"I want to save lives. So I was armed with all protective equipment - face shields, hand gloves, the PPE gear. I took off the jacket only when it became too heavy for me to move," Panda said.
He recalls the help extended by locals to him at least twice in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha once to change a flat tyre and another to change the coolant.
"I was in a hurry to reach home and there were times when I feared I would be delayed. Common people came to my help," he said.
Panda had praise for arrangements made for migrant labourers at the West Bengal border.
When I reached the Bengal border on May 7 morning the one very big difference I noticed was that there were better arrangements for the thousands of migrant labourers waiting there.
There was a quarantine unit and rapid tests were being conducted.
Quizzed why he wanted to be in Kolkata instead of working among the people in Maharashtra, Panda said "I had heard many health care workers were getting infected by coronavirus in Bengal. In Maharashtra, the number was lower. So I wanted to join the healthcare soldiers in Bengal to wage the battle from the frontline."
"Also I wanted to fight against COVID -19 in my home state. Otherwise serving people in Maharashtra or Bengal is the same for a doctor as one is serving the people of the country," the young medico said.