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NEW PANDEMIC
How the nation pays for ignoring health careSyed Nooruzzaman
Some time ago, when we
(my younger brother and
myself) went to our
ancestral place, a village
in UP's Azamgarh district,
my brother needed to
consult a doctor. He had mild fever
and we looked for a properly
qualified allopath for treatment. We
were told that we could not get any
MBBS or MD degree holder doctor in
the area. We would have to travel at
least 10 km to find a properly
qualified medical practitioner or a
government-run medical care
centre. The district hospital was at
least 45 km away. Tablighi Jamaat members in Delhi's Nizamuddin Markaz When this is the reality, with a little variations here and there, could the country think of effectively handling a situation like the one caused by the coronavirus pandemic? It would have been a terrible situation had the government wasted a little more time to decide about the step it has taken to take on the Covid-19 pandemic, going ahead with a coercive yet unavoidable lockdown from March 25 to May 3. Even now one cannot be sure how effective the country-wide lockdown with social (or physical) distancing and other precautions will prove to be once the workers who have shifted to their villages and the others trying to reach their ancestral places are asked to undergo medical tests for Covid-19 infection. That situation is likely to arise in the near future and it would put the country's medical care system to greater strain. Much of what is being done to contain the pandemic is confined to cities. Luckily, the villages and small towns appear to be safer, but the nation cannot afford to be complacent. Chances of many of the migrant workers who have reached their villages with coronavirus infection cannot be ruled out. But the problem is how to establish whether they are Covid-19 carriers when there are not enough testing kits available in the country. Much of what is being done to contain the pandemic is confined to cities. Luckily, the villages and small towns appear to be safer, but the nation cannot afford to be complacent. Chances of many of the migrant workers who have reached their villages with coronavirus infection cannot be ruled out. But the problem is how to establish whether they are Covid-19 carriers when there are not enough testing kits available in the country. A medic conducts screening of a patient as part of precautionary measure against coronavirus, at a government hospital Even in cities like Delhi, which has been at the second place after Maharashtra on the list of coronavirus cases, 42,000 rapid testing kits were made available to health experts on April 18. With this, the number of Covid-19 positive cases has begun to rise alarmingly with many apparently healthy people found to have been carrying the coronavirus. These are mostly asymptomatic cases, which indicate that the stage of communitytransmission of the deadly virus may have arrived, though health experts are yet to confirm it. Let us hope that alarming stage has not come yet as it would make the situation more complicated.
A laboratory technician places a tag on a box containing coronavirus
disease (COVID-19) testing kit at a sample collection centre.
Some Indian companies are
producing testing kits but the
requirement is too high to be met
locally. That is why India placed an
order for 1.5 million testing kits from
China even at the risk of their quality
not meeting international standards. Given the facilities available to contain the contagion, the exact picture of effectiveness of the country-wide lockdown may be known by May 3, when the average incubation period --- two-three weeks --- of the virus will be over. As the situation prevails today, it is difficult to believe that the Covid-19 threat will cease to be scary by then. Compared to this, the health care expenditure in China in 2018 stood at 6 trillion yuan, a huge increase from the figure in 2000 -- 500 billion The experience gained since March 25 shows that the lockdown has helped meet the threat to a considerable extent, but the cost is too heavy to pay. The cost could have been much lower than what the nation has paid if the authorities could have resorted to a lockdown, a very tough measure no doubt, immediately after March 3 . yuan. Let us keep aside China as it is
a communist dictatorship. Italy,
which found it very difficult to face
the crisis caused by the Covid-19
pandemic, spends as much as 9.2
per cent of that country's GDP ($3,200 per capita in real terms). The
US is far ahead of the other nations
in the developed world with a health
sector expenditure of 18 per cent of
the GDP or $3.5 trillion (2017 figures)
and $1.5 trillion comes directly or
indirectly from the federal
government. The writer is Delhi-based senior journalist and political commentator. |