Dear Dr Hutchison,
Subsuming the collective routine for the greater good
Keeping at bay the world-wide virus - the view from our eye hospital
Until 22 March, in our eye hospital, we administrators attended biweekly meetings in our work place where doctors leading the efforts to prevent employees and families from contracting covid-19 instructed us on the last resort - hand to hand combat with the corona virus. Narrating the tales of service doctors and nurses and health technicians were rendering in distant Italy and Iran, they urged us to learn the ropes of hand washing and respiratory hygiene and social distancing, suggesting we watch out against impulsive hoarding and eatables not prepared at one's home, saving as a means of earning when it came to food portions, cleaning materials, exhorting on not overusing sterillium, masks, soap, calling our attention to sensible moves such as smoking cessation. Hydroxyquinolone tablets were ordered in bulk to tide past any eventuality such as outbreak of pneumonia across the hospital network.
As was publicly acknowledged, what helped bring us up to speed with preparing time bound Plan A, Plan B and Plan C was the great sharing of next steps by medical colleagues who had from previous weeks been experiencing the throes of the covid-19 spread in South East Asia. That was how our front office patient counsellors were seen coordinating with doctors to triage the patient influx.
Staffers in the Telephonic Appointments unit were urging patients to reschedule appointments. Uncontrolled diabetes or asthma was a risk they softly pointed out, rising to the challenge of the caller's wrath alternating with disbelief. "Government's orders," the good doctor reported speaking calmly to a heckling patient.
Fresh body-size plastic covers used for garbage collection were ideal for upcycling as OR attire-like overalls - the gloves, face mask, shoe covers and hair cap would supplement this Do It Yourself (DIY) protective gear. Our eye hospital's product development unit, The Srujana Center for Innovation, ideated and created an open source visor for use during the resource-starved weeks sweeping in the pandemic here in India. The instructional video for this DIY resource is at this link:
As the annual examinations for students attending school or college were postponed across the country, the publishers' offering of a month's free access to the much-adored children's comics came like a breath of fresh air.
22 March 2020 Sunday ̶ India stayed home as instructed by the Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi, at 5pm clapping from windows and balconies applauding those tasked with the well being of the nation - health care workers and others toiling to provide essential services while working age groups stayed home to remain safe, to prevent clogging IC Units in built or makeshift hospitals. Going by the television news clips, clearly we had not learnt the nuances of maintaining physical distance, each one 6 feet away from all others. The lockdown in India was beginning with various states instructing citizens to stay home till the month end - 31 March.
23 March 2020 Monday, work from home hours went into a tizzy; joining in petitioning the health minister to make coronavirus test kits available, for free; rejoicing on receiving messages on WhatsApp about the safe return of friends' children from USA or UK on the last international flight into India; praying to the Almighty for the 14 day home quarantine to turn out alright given that corner rooms in base hospitals were offered to those arriving from abroad: bare facilities where travellers reaching India were forced to go without food, drinking water, faucet water and clean toilets; India announced a nation-wide lockdown as a preventive measure for flattening the curve - foreseeing that lakhs of citizens would fill, nay clog, the ICUs in our hospitals - one lakh is a tenth of a million. Others who are unwell may have to forego hospitalization; tele-consultation is on the rise.
By mid week, India had extended the lock down to 21 days; Telangana state had sealed its borders with Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Odisha; domestic flights had wound down, stranding citizens in transit; the average Indian was sickened on viewing TV visuals of policemen beating hard any citizens venturing on the roads, the worst-hit were the stragglers caught unawares; all passenger trains were suspended, the citizens of Bihar returning there from their work spot in Kerala who had missed the last train home from Delhi; the plane load from USA flying in via Amsterdam to New Delhi that was initially refused permission and had to return to Amsterdam for having arrived from European soil was allowed to finally land after several days; you may well ask what it was like to spend the pan India new year festival of Telugu land (Ugadi), Punjab (Chetti Chand), Maharashtra (Gudi Padwa), Jammu and Kashmir (Navreh) mid week on 25 March sans traditional gaiety; or the next day waking up to the new reality of no shows from integral others such as the maid, cook, milkman, newspaper distributor, vegetable vendor; what of those 38000 people stranded on ships that have arrived in our several ports, not permitted to disembark and head home to the luxury of a head bath and filling food?
Today, I enquired after a paediatric ophthalmology fellow from Italy who had spent 3 months in our hospital here in southern India almost ten years ago.
Please read page 70 in this link 'A Taste of India - An International Fellowship Experience at LVPEI, Hyderabad, by Dr Chiara Morini' https://www.lvpei.org/assets/images/about/annual-report/LVPEI-AR-2011-12....
I came to know that she is currently close to the epicentre in Italy, many of her colleagues are unwell, and she and others like her are serving in non ophthalmology positions willing themselves to bring a halt to the toll taken by the coronavirus. As I riffled though the annual reports, several names surfaced - all benefactors and associations with South East Asia, USA, Europe, Canada, Dubai, and other locations of our one world.
Today, our Director announced that Dr Komal Agarwal, a young female doctor, had visited city hospitals to check the vision status of 20 premature newborns; such weekly rounds to prevent blindness from Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) are not shirked in dire times. Similarly, we have news by email from the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) that past president Dr Marie-Tassignon is tirelessly, selflessly operating on the eyes of babies in Belgium to prevent blindness.
It is time to subsume our life routines to India lockdown mode so that children, adults, all of humanity survive the looming crisis of lung infection and time out. You heard right: or we risk being hurled right out of our dearest one and only inter-be planet, Mother Earth. In hordes.
Thank you.
Regards,
Shobha
Shobha Mocherla, PhDAudio-Visual Producer, CommunicationsL V Prasad Eye
Institute, L V Prasad Marg
Road 2, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, 500034
Andhra Pradesh, India
T: +91-40-68102368, M: +91-09494454635
W:www.lvpei.org, E:mshoba@lvpei.org,www.twitter.com/lvpei, W:http://www.lvpei.org/patientcare/videos/
I support LVPEI's efforts to prevent blindness and provide vision
rehabilitation http://www.lvpei.org/aboutus/ways-to-get-involved
CHIFA profile: Shobha Mocherla is an audio-visual producer with L V Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, India. She produces videos for medical and instructional training. www.lvpei.org/videogallery.html mshoba AT lvpei.org
