NEW DELHI: The Covid-19 pandemic continues to cast its long shadow as 2022 ends, with the virus again seeing a resurgence globally, especially in neighbouring China, prompting India to take several proactive steps to pre-empt the fourth wave as 2023 rings in.
But Covid-19 was not the only health news that hogged the limelight this year. From monkeypox, now called mpox, to remove the stigma attached to it and which killed over 25 people globally, including one in India, to a lumpy skin disease outbreak that killed over 80,000 cattle, and a measles outbreak, it has been a constant struggle to cope with diseases.
Adding to the woes were frequent videos flooding social media of sudden cardiac deaths, especially among young adults, some even dying while singing, dancing, walking or gyming. The phenomenon, being linked to Covid, is now being studied by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
India, which has reported the third highest number of Covid deaths at 530,690 after the US (1080010) and Brazil (692461) till Dec 23, has all the Omicron sub-lineages seen in China, but in fewer numbers, which hasn’t led to drastic surge or clustering so far.
According to experts, India will be able to ride the Covid wave due to hybrid immunity until and unless a highly infectious variant emerges in the coming months.
The union health ministry has warned that the next 40 days would be crucial and a surge is likely in January. Thus leaving nothing to chance, the ministry swung into action as it announced carrying out random testing of two per cent of international travellers from hotspots nations and heightened vigil and surveillance, with some states, like Karnataka, making masks mandatory in public spaces. It has also made Covid-negative RT-PCR report taken 72 hours prior to flight for all international travellers from these nations mandatory.
In its war against Covid, the government, which is pushing for booster doses as only 27-28 per cent of the eligible population have taken it till now, approved Bharat Biotech’s iNCOVACC, India’s first intranasal Covid vaccine, which will now be available by January-end at Rs. 800 at private market and Rs. 325 in government hospitals.
The year began with the fear of the third Covid wave, driven by Omicron, going the same way as the one seen in 2021 – more devastating than the first, as many died in the wake of shortages of oxygen cylinders - a fact pointed out by a parliamentary panel, which asked the union health ministry to “audit deaths due to oxygen shortage”, scarce hospital beds and medical supplies.
But even as the authorities were battling Covid-19, war clouds gathered when Russia attacked Ukraine in February this year. The direct hit was thousands of medical students. The government evacuated nearly 20,000 medical students, bringing to the fore the scarcity of excellent and cost-effective medical colleges in India, which the government plans to plug as it has announced one medical college in each district.
But the hopes of these thousands of returnees to become doctors are yet to be fulfilled. The government, which first dragged its feet into providing them alternatives in India, then announced ‘compulsory rotating medical internship’ for two years to make up for the clinical training, which they could not do physically. But these returnees are now protesting and asking for its rollback, as the same stipulation does not apply to Indian medical graduates.
One bright spot among the gloom was the rapid development of Covid vaccines, though soon questions were raised about the efficacy of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, whose supply to UN agencies was suspended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in April. Soon media reports claimed that regulatory approval for its manufacture was rushed due to “political pressure”, which the union health ministry said were “misleading” and “fallacious”.
India, known as the world's pharmacy, was hit by another controversy when WHO issued a global alert over India-made four cough syrups linked with the deaths of 70 children in The Gambia in October. A parliamentary committee in The Gambia has recommended the prosecution of Maiden Pharmaceutical, the manufacturer of cough syrups. In the wake of this, the government announced a joint inspection of identified drug manufacturing units. But as the year comes to an end, yet another controversy rocked, with Uzbekistan claiming that 18 children died after consuming India-made syrup.
The focus on Covid, however, led to routine immunisation taking a backseat and was cited as one of the reasons for the measles outbreak, and also flagged by WHO and UNICEF. Till November, India recorded 12,773 cases of measles, making it the largest outbreak, as per WHO. Before the pandemic, 11 countries in the Southeast Asia region had aimed to eliminate measles by 2020. Now, the next deadline India has set is 2023.
The same situation was seen in battling TB. The health ministry accepted that Covid significantly reversed the gains in India's TB control due to delayed detection and prognosis. A total of 21.4 lakh TB cases were notified in India in 2021 - 18 per cent higher than in 2020.
Keeping this in mind, in September, Ni-Akshay Mitra, a crowd-sourced programme which allows organisations and individuals to adopt 12 lakh TB patients and support them directly by providing them with nutrition supplies.
India has been endemic for vector-borne diseases, especially malaria, Chikungunia, dengue, one of the most common, Nipah virus and Zika, and 2022 was no exception. While over 63,000 cases of dengue were reported in the country till September end, as per a study conducted by Dr Pragya Yadav, a senior scientist at the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV), Pune, zika virus is silently spreading across almost all parts of India and in areas where it had never been reported earlier and thus needs urgent surveillance.