Sudhir Kumar Rakesh
IAS (Retd.)
Patna : The global population as well as the medical fraternity is harassed by COVID-19 in an unprecedented manner. Nobody knows what is the cure; nobody is sure of the development of a Vaccine; nobody is able to tell us with certainty what is the exact prevention or precaution for keeping COVID-19 away and in most of the places one finds that standardised treatment protocols have either not been developed or are not being followed uniformly.
What the experts are doing is not in the public domain in a language which could be understood by the common man (a person who is generally aware of his/her surroundings, who takes a bit of interest in general knowledge and current affairs and who is generally concerned about issues affecting the population at large). To that extent, there appears to be a communication gap. Mainstream media (both print and electronic) as well as social media is full of narratives which fall into both categories – information as well as misinformation.
Responsible Governments, Institutions and Authorities need to tackle this information gap on a priority basis in order to save their people from panicking. An unfortunate development during the past few weeks has been politicisation of developments related to Coronavirus. Number of tests carried out, number of persons infected, number of persons cured, number of beds available for treating COVID-19 patients, number of deaths due to COVID-19 infection, even the time taken in and manner of disposal of dead bodies – all have become bones of contention among various political parties and their followers. Mainstream media as well as social media has also joined this battle as if a war were being fought among various entities.
All this has relegated the main issues to the background. If nearly 13 million persons have been infected by the Coronavirus all over the globe, if nearly 7.6 million out of them have recovered, if nearly 5.72 lakh persons have already died because of COVID-19 infection, then one would have expected at least all their medical histories to be recorded, digitised, analysed and presented for scientific research.
India also has seen nearly 8.88 lakh COVID-19 patients out of which nearly 5.60 lakh have recovered. Have our hospitals compiled medical history and data relating to recovered patients ? 5.60 lakh is not a small number. If so many persons were infected by the Corona virus and got cured also, this large sample could provide a very good database for scientific and medical analysis.
Did the recovered patients have any other ailments ? To which gender, age group and residential area did they belong ? At what stage of infection did they go to the hospital ? What were the initial symptoms ? What were the preliminary tests carried out for ascertaining whether they were Corona positive or not ? After they were found Corona positive, what line of treatment was prescribed ? What drugs were administered and at what intervals ? Did they need oxygen support or ventilator support ? Were they hospitalised or the treatment was carried out at their residence/home quarantine centre ? All these questions must have been asked, if the patients have been recorded as Corona infected and subsequently recovered.
But the main question is : were the demographic details, medical history, symptoms and treatment given to each of these patients recorded ? If yes, have these been compiled and analyased ? If so, have standard treatment protocols been finaliased by groups of experts for different types of Corona infected patients (at various stages of infection) and circulated to various hospitals/treatment centres?
These are the main questions our policy makers, decision makers and medical experts need to ask. Even if data related to 3-4 lakh infected and recovered patients is available, it should be immediately compiled, digitisad and analysed. With our Medical experts, IT experts and Scientists / Researchers working in various groups specially formed for this purpose, Treatment Protocols can be immediately standardised and circulated to various hospitals.