BENGALURU: While it is easier to keep adults at Covid hospitals in the state engaged, doctors find it challenging to keep children busy while they are being treated for the pandemic. “Children sometimes are a handful, but then we have made sure that we provide them with all facilities — not just medical. To ensure that they don’t get bored, we have different activities planned for them,” informed Dr Jayanti CR, Director cum Dean of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru, under which is attached Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru, where most of the Covid-positive children are admitted.
According to statistics available with the Karnataka Health Department, so far in Karnataka, among the children who tested positive, 12 are aged between five and 10 years, about 40 are between 10 and 20 years, while seven are below five years of age. “Engaging children who are in their teens poses a different kind of challenge with their temper tantrums.
Keeping the very young ones who get cranky soon, is also a challenge,” said a senior doctor. According to Victoria Hospital staff, the challenge is also to handle those children whose parents did not test positive, but they have. The hospital has identified a different block with special wards to admit children who need their parents to take care of them, in a situation where a child tests positive, but the parents are negative. In order to make their stay ‘entertaining’, a few hospitals are showing children inspiring positive animated movies, and providing them with colouring books and board games.
“If both (parents and children) are positive, then they are admitted along with the other patients in the relevant block. Kids are given board games to play, videos to watch, drawing and colouring books are provided, and nurses tell them stories,” said Dr Jayanti. According to a Group D worker at one of the Covid hospitals, children who are younger than five years are usually not toilet-trained, especially in rural areas.
“While many are asymptomatic, some of them do have diarrhoea or vomiting, so it’s double work for us when they dirty the toilets. But we take extra care and don’t mind cleaning the children’s wards a few more times,” said the worker on the condition of anonymity.