PANAJI: While health officials blame Covid-19 deaths on people reaching hospitals late, citizens have a different story to tell. They say that the overwhelmed
healthcare system not only releases their test results late, but also leaves them waiting for hours in casualty wards when their symptoms worsen. In addition to this, they wait in hope to get a
hospital bed.
In one such instance, a senior citizen who had been waiting for his RT-PCR result turned breathless and had to be rushed to hospital. His daughter, Rima, said his results came five days after he had taken the test and three days after he was admitted to hospital. “He initially assumed he had gotten the common cold as he had eaten a cold dessert, and began taking paracetamol. Every time we inquired about his test result, those concerned told us it would come. The infection ultimately reached his lungs and he had a bad CT score,” Rima told TOI.
Unfortunately, family members who were unaware of the senior citizen’s status and tried to help him, also ended up contracting the virus.
Although he was taken to the North Goa
district hospital and put on oxygen, just four hours had passed when the hospital’s authorities told the family to shift him to the
GMC owing to a shortage of beds. “After making a few calls at the GMC, were were able to get him into the casualty ward where a CT scan was done and hospitalisation at the South Goa district hospital was recommended,” Rima said. “He waited for almost three hours for the ambulance to take him from GMC to the South Goa district hospital as only one patient in allowed in an ambulance at a time. By the time he was admitted, it was past 4am.”
A doctor told TOI that beds cannot be freed up on time at the South Goa district hospital as ambulances that transfer patients from there to a step-down facility like the
ESI hospital, take time to arrive, leaving patients waiting for hours. Another health official said there is intense pressure on the ambulance service as it has to attend not only to Covid-19 patients but also to non-Covid cases.
In a similar incident, a young man who was Covid-positive with high fever went to the GMC at around 9.30am and after getting a CT scan done, was recommended hospitalisation at the South Goa district hospital. “I was sent there at 1pm in an ambulance but had to wait for four hours in casualty for a bed to be freed,” he told TOI.
He said that although he had contacted a doctor at a private hospital for a bed and was put on the waiting list, he hadn’t yet received a call. What’s more is that he received his RT-PCR report three days into home isolation, when his fever began to rise.
A mother of two who tested positive but wasn’t being monitored during home isolation by the government doctor concerned, was also referred to the South Goa district hospital casualty by a private doctor when her fever didn’t subside. She got out of the hospital after seven hours feeling worse.
“There was a big queue in casualty. There were serious and not too serious cases there, while others were being brought from the GMC. Once I got inside, there was another queue after which a doctor checked my temperature, blood pressure, oxygen levels and told me to do an X-ray. I was then told that the radiologist had gone to Hospicio to conduct a sonography and would be back around 6pm,” she told TOI.
“I decided to wait until the radiologist arrived at 730pm. I felt so sick while waiting that I had to go back into casualty and ask for some tablets as my fever was rising. There was a woman who was almost fainting and others more serious than me. It was a very sad scene,” she added.
Karen, a Panaji-based citizen, said it was “ridiculous” and “irresponsible” for the government to blame people for coming in late. “When they come in on time, where is the infrastructure for them? Some are waiting for results and don’t know what to do with their symptoms. The government should have foreseen the rise in testing and shouldn’t have let a backlog build up,” she said.
A private doctor, on the other hand, suggested rapid antigen testing for symptomatic people so as not to waste time in providing treatment.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login