THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The UK has so far witnessed more than 16,000 deaths due to COVID- 19 pandemic in hospitals alone.
Dr Ajikumar Kavidasan, a Malayali chest physician and an interventional pulmonologist attached to Croydon University Hospital (CUH) under National Health Service (NHS) Trust in London and his team of pulmonologists have a tough task ahead as several scores of Corona -19 suspects are making a beeline for their consultation daily.
Braving all odds, Alappuzha native Dr Aji has been on a path-breaking recovery trail. With more than 1.2 lakh confirmed COVID-19 cases in UK, it's capital city London is showing the maximum number of cases. CUH, which is like a district general hospital based in South London, has so far witnessed 120 COVID- 19 deaths which include a 13-year-old girl. It has not been easy for Dr Ajikumar and his team of five doctors to combat the coronavirus with no treatment protocol available initially.
Dr Ajikumar, who is the head of the respiratory medicine at CUH, himself sees close to fifty COVID-19 patients a day wherein the majority of them turn out to be positive.
He told TNIE that his major finding is that those affected with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has fairly no chance of contracting coronavirus. “It may be because of previous multiple infections and careful self-isolation these patients have been practising.
The most affected with coronavirus are mostly healthy people who are around 50 years of age and have already hypertension and diabetes,” said 50- year-old Dr Ajikumar, a former student of TD Medical College, Alappuzha.
For Dr Ajikumar, life has always been complex and he feels that it is his fighting skills which have kept him in good stead so far.
His school days at Mangalam Government High School at Arattupuzha was not so rosy where he had to run back and forth dozens of times from his parents’ wayside teashop to the public tap.
After filling all the tubs with water, he will help his parents, Kavidasan and Tulasi Bai, to prepare steam cake (puttu) and chickpeas curry at the wayside eatery near TD Medical College. Sheer hard work and determination helped him pursue his studies from the same medical college.
He said that people in the UK took the pandemic seriously only after their Prime Minister Boris Johnson was confirmed COVID-19 positive.
Dr Ajikumar feels that if the UK too had emulated the lockdown like his native country, things wouldn’t have gone awry there.
Arattupuzha native Dr Ajikumar is determined to see a good outcome after his team prepared a recovery trial to combat the deadly virus through a combination of hydroxychloroquine, Beta interferon and high-dose steroids where its success rate is still in the preliminary stages.