Neha Mehrotra and Aniruddha Ghosal at Associated Press have been talking to medical students in India, who they say feel betrayed by the government’s handling of the Covid crisis there.
Dr Siddharth Tara, they report, has, since the beginning of the week had a fever and persistent headache. A postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao hospital, he took a Covid-19 test, but the results have been delayed. His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has it.
“I am not able to breathe. In fact, I’m more symptomatic than my patients. So how can they make me work?” asked Tara.
The challenges facing India today are being compounded by the fragility of its health system and its doctors. There are 541 medical colleges in India with 36,000 post-graduate medical students, and according to doctors’ unions constitute the majority at any government hospitals — they are the bulwark of the India’s response.
But for over a year, they have been subjected to mammoth workloads, lack of pay, rampant exposure to the virus and complete academic neglect. “We’re cannon fodder, that’s all,” said Tara.
Jignesh Gengadiya, a 26-year-old postgraduate medical student, knew he’d be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week when he signed up for a residency at the Government Medical College in the city of Surat in Gujarat state.
What he didn’t expect was to be the only doctor taking care of 60 patients in normal circumstances, and 20 patients on duty in the intensive care unit.
“ICU patients require constant attention. If more than one patient starts collapsing, who do I attend to?” asked Gengadiya.
Hindu Rao hospital, where Tara works, provides a snapshot of the country’s dire situation. It has increased beds for virus patients, but hasn’t hired any additional doctors, quadrupling the workload, Tara said. To make matters worse, senior doctors are refusing to treat virus patients.
“I get that senior doctors are older and more susceptible to the virus. But as we have seen in this wave, the virus affects old and young alike,” said Tara, who suffers from asthma but has been doing regular Covid-19 duty.
Nearly 75% of postgraduate medical students in the surgery department tested positive for the virus in the last month, said a student from the department who spoke anonymously out of fear of retribution.
