Highlights Of The #HelpingHands Telethon: An Initiative To Set-Up COVID Centres For Children And Vaccinate People In Rural India

That was a fighter baby so to say. The baby came on day 25 with breathing difficulty, hardly able to breathe, with fever, not able to feed also so our whole NICU team came together and put the baby on a ventilator with oxygen and other supportive care. After five days, the baby recovered. That was really incredible and gives a lot of hope. Simultaneously I want to tell you that kids don't get so sick but when they do, we need expert hands and I believe we are prepared to handle this. We have guidelines also.  We all know about handwashing, distancing, and all but we all need to get vaccinated. If elders are protected, children will also be protected. Secondly, don't panic. We have handled this and we can handle it. There is only 1-2 per cent chance that child will go to moderate or severe case so don't panic and vaccinate everyone above 18 as soon as possible.

What all of us have been through is unprecedented. It was unexpected and nobody thought that we would have to experience such a thing. The wave came as a tsunami but it took everybody unexpected, nobody was prepared for such a huge wave. That's where the problem was. There was a big difference between first and second wave. In the first wave, not many patients were in need of the oxygen. In second wave, 80 per cent patients were in need of oxygen. We had 7-8 ventilators at start but by the end of May we had 25 ventilators. It is important to enhance equipment. Form 16 ICU beds, now we have 32 ICU beds. Our critical care beds should be more than what we had in the last wave. 

Numbers from Ahmednagar are for a month but 10 per cent of cases are among children. It is not new that children are being affected. But why children are vulnerable? Because they are unable to follow infection prevention rules. For children below 5 years, they have less number of receptors in the lungs which are important for case becoming severe. We have hardly seen any severe cases in children because of the less number of these receptors among children. But yes, we have to prepare for the third wave as below 18 are not getting vaccines so we have to be careful. We have been working with ChildFund for almost a year and they have helped in setting child-friendly centers. They have helped us in different ways in the last one year.

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We always say 'samridh' (prosperous) India is possible when we all are 'swasth' (healthy). 65 per cent of the population is in rural India. It seems the primary health system and services in India are still developing. The quality of care currently is very poor. There are different data that suggest that there are 3.2 government hospitals per 10,000 patients. The state of Bihar has only 0.6. COVID has given us all a lesson. It is a wake-up call that healthcare is extremely important area to focus on. 

I think we do need to have a concern over situation in the rural India because the data systems are not as efficient, and as comprehensive as they are in urban areas. And even the media presence, which regularly reports on incidents and events, is not as widespread in rural areas. So, we do not get the alerts, even from the media. However, from whatever data are available, it appears that even in the rural areas, we are not seeing that level of surge anymore. And we are not getting any very disturbing stories coming in, as we were seeing about two to three weeks earlier. So while the actual numbers may be imprecise, I believe that the direction in which the pandemic is proceeding, which is downward towards recovery, I think that is happening even in small towns, and rural areas.