HYDERABAD: The Telangana government is yet to start post-COVID clinics for patients who recovered from the disease but continue to suffer from health problems as an aftermath of being infected. Recently, the governments of Tamil Nadu and Delhi launched such post-COVID clinics. The TN government, in particular, started such clinics at most of the major government hospitals.
There have been many studies from around the world that have reported that the battle for many COVID-19 patients starts just as they recover, especially for those who suffered from the disease for a longer duration and had moderate to severe symptoms.
The post-COVID health problems they face range from neurological problems like headaches and mild memory loss to psychiatric disorders and other issues like body pains or weakness.
Dr Anish Anand, General Physician at Apollo Hospitals, Jubilee Hills said: "COVID-19 is a new disease and lot of research is being done. In the limited time, COVID-19 has thrown a lot of surprises with its varied symptoms, including post-recovery issues."
He pointed out that after recovering from COVID-19, some of the problems which can be faced include long Covid syndrome consisting of extreme weakness lasting for several weeks, muscle pains and palpitations.
"Patients can have feelings of giddiness, sweating with postural drop of blood pressure, breathlessness with chest pain which could be due to lung damage and rarely heart issues (myocarditis) which could range from minor temporary to major permanent damage to lung and heart requiring readmission to hospital, neuropsychiatric issues consisting of memory problems to anxiety and depression and occasionally kidney issues ranging from minor to severe requiring dialysis," he added.
Dr Kiran Madhala, Head of the Critical Care Medicine at Government Medical College in Nizamabad, pointed out: "Patients who recovered from severe symptoms of COVID-19 with lung damage and requiring hospitalisation, need medical attention even after recovering from COVID. Studies suggest, around six per cent of COVID-19 cases require hospitalisation. The number of recovered patients in Telangana has crossed one-lakh mark. As the numbers are still increasing, it would be good to set up post-Covid-19 clinics in major government hospitals and even the private hospitals can start similar clinics."