COVID19 has struck us very hard. The tally of total cases has reached close to 20mn, where India alone is the home for 2.22mn COVID19 victims, making it the third-worst affected country in the world. But even after being the world’s second-largest country in terms of population, India is managing itself quite well in this pandemic. Our recovery rate is outstanding as nearly 1.48mn patients have recovered from COVID19.
The need for Medical Equipment in COVID t/t Centres:
Even if we keep this pandemic situation aside, every healthcare organization must have medical equipment with them. Not only India, but we have seen many cases across the world where the patients have to suffer due to a lack of medical equipment in healthcare organizations.
COVID19 is gripping us in its claws. The cases are increasing at an alarming rate. We are witnessing 50-60 thousand cases daily in our country, and with this spreading rate, it would not be wrong to say that this pandemic is on its peak.
One report states that there is only one government hospital bed for 2046 people in India. According to the figures presented by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in June 2020, there were 32362 ICU beds in total in our country for Corona patients. Apart from this, India also had 120104 oxygen supported beds and 891828 isolation beds.
This tally was sufficient for that time as there were 3 lakh Corona cases at that time, but now we have crossed the count 20 lakh. This sudden and rapid increase in the cases poses a question that do we have sufficient medical equipment to cope up with this condition.
Conditions where medical equipment shortage was exposed:
It was around April when the news came out that the Doctors and other Healthcare workers who are putting their own life at risk to save others from Corona do not have proper amounts of PPE kits in West Bengal. It wasn’t the case with West Bengal only. Many doctors in Karnataka reported the same. Where some states are dealing with this pandemic quite nicely, the others are struggling to gather the PPEs.
It poses a fear in the mind of these selfless beings. Whether they will be alive after all these ends? COVID is not a joke, and neither the life of these healthcare workers is. It is not the end of the tension. Some of these hospitals even reported the shortage of N95 masks and sanitizers. How is the world’s largest democracy supposed to fight with this virus if such is the situation?
What needs to be done?
The government should look into the matter more seriously avoiding the issues which are being made very important but can be delayed as there is no harm in postponing them. The government must make a specific department which should look over only on the matter of supply of medical equipment in the COVID Treatment Centres.
This department should properly be supervised to ensure its proper working, and the needs of these healthcare institutions should be completed as soon as possible. In this time of shortage, one can buy medical equipment online also.
We have to keep this in mind that if you need to win a war, you need to keep your soldiers adequately armed.