THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The delay in detecting Nipah infection in a 12-year-old boy who died of the deadly virus at Kozhikode medical college hospital points to compromised treatment given to non-Covid patients in major public hospitals.
The MCH has a history of treating Nipah patients during the first outbreak in 2018.
Yet it could not provide a ventilator to the boy because all the three ventilators were occupied by Covid patients.
There is an internal inquiry underway on the alleged laxity at the Kozhikode medical college after a public scare.
However health experts alleged that there could be more deaths that would have happened due to lack of attention given to non-Covid patients.
The non-Covid patients suffering from tuberculosis, renal failure, heart diseases and trauma depend on tertiary care provided by medical college hospitals. But the long presence of Covid for the past one-and-a- half years has changed the focus of public hospitals from MCHs to primary health centres at the periphery.
“Non-Covid care has been severely compromised due to Covid and Covid-related activities. Patients needing dialysis, renal transplantation, joint replacement, trauma care are some of the worst affected non-Covid cases,” said state president of Kerala Government Medical College Teachers’ Association, Dr Binoy S.
While a few medical colleges have restarted non-Covid functions after the first wave, the surge in second wave resulted in attention shifting back to Covid. In the first week of May the health department directed all hospitals to focus on Covid patients and converted all fever clinics into Covid clinics.
The spread of Covid virus within the hospital premises has also made authorities open up more non-Covid treatment facilities.
“Nowadays when a person comes to trauma with a history of a fall we ask the person to wait till we get his Covid done test done. There have been so many instances when a non-Covid person admitted in ward getting Covid infection. Of course we do emergency surgeries without waiting for Covid negative result. But not all non-Covid patients get the benefit. It may be an emergency for the patient, but not for the hospital staff,” said a senior doctor in a medical college.
Dr Binoy, an orthopaedic surgeon himself, acknowledged that there were occasions when patients coming in trauma were discharged after casting plasters. He blamed the unnecessary referrals from the periphery for creating excess load in medical colleges.
“We could optimally use the resources for both non-Covid and Covid, if we start treating only the most severe Covid patients. Instead the manpower and other resources get compromised when more moderate and less severe patients get referred to the tertiary care MCHs. 95 per cent of the patients can be treated at community health centres, district hospitals and taluk hospitals,” said Dr Binoy.
The state chapter of Indian Medical Association has raised the problems of ignoring non-Covid treatment. But the health department is yet to acknowledge its importance.
“We have suggested the idea of starting both Covid and non-Covid treatments in separate blocks or between district hospitals and MCHs. The problems of government hospitals which have been facing human resource shortage have only worsened with Covid. Covid treatment required almost double the number of staff. Apart from financial burden for additional staff, the fear of cross infection in hospitals during the surge may have prevented the government from restarting non-Covid care,” state secretary of Indian Medical Association, Dr Gopikumar P.