Storytellers

Through the masked face, express empathy Vijay Gopichandran For many people Covid-19 and the lock-down have completely changed their lives. For some of us, privileged lot, not much as changed. My 7-day work week has not changed. I am not locked down inside my home and go out to the hospital every day. For some of us, the not so ‘socially active’ lot, not meeting people, not hanging out, not going out for lunches and dinners etc. also do not matter much. But when I look at my work closely, I have realized that so much has changed. The change has been so sudden, but the ambient uncertainty and anxiety of the pandemic has made it imperceptible. Yesterday, I saw the video of an innovative ‘no contact’ Covid-19 screening clinic. It is a model of screening patients with suspected Covid-19 while minimizing the contact between the patient and the doctor. The video goes like this. The patient’s token number is called out in the public announcement system. A well dressed, confident...

Small deeds to maintain normalcy during pandemic times Vijay Gopichandran About two weeks ago, two of my colleagues and I sat in a large room, separating ourselves at the recommended 2 meter distance from each other and my senior colleague remarked “It is as though the ‘reset button’ for the world has been pressed. We all will soon have to adapt to a new normal in our lives”.  It was the beginning of the lock-down of the whole country to contain the spread of Covid-19. Since there are no public transport vehicles on the roads and I do not drive or own any private vehicles, I have started walking from and to the hospital. The distance is not much, just about 3 KM, but I am seeing things which I have never seen before. There are a bunch of people living on the pavements near the metro station on the way to my hospital. They were part of the background tapestry of the urban busy life that I had never noticed them before. One family has a young man, a woman and two scrawn...

Solidarity in the time of Covid-19 Vijay Gopichandran (All names reported in this blog are changed for confidentiality purposes) “Why haven’t your pasted that sticker outside my door?”, asked an anxious elderly lady to the health worker who visited her to check whether any members in her household had cough, cold or fever. “The lady was very much worried that we were paying less attention to her house compared to the house which had a sticker outside their door. She thought the ones with the sticker outside their house got better attention.”, narrated Mansoor, one of 26 other frontline health workers whom we met yesterday during our field visit to evaluate the cluster containment activity in the city. The field staff are working in a committed and diligent manner, carrying out their role in control of the Covid-19 illness. We read articles and newspaper reports about the stigma associated with stickers on people’s doors identifying them as quarantined houses and ind...

The Pandemic of Corona Virus - COVID-19 By Dr. Sanjai Subha Everyone in this world is now aware of the word – corona virus and the pandemic caused by it. It has created a tremendous amount of fear, as well as uncertainty among all classes of people, irrespective of the difference that exists among them. How did a virus of such small size evolve as a global problem? Why is everyone   afraid of it? Even the most economically developed countries like the USA, Spain, Italy, and China are finding it difficult to control it? What will happen to India? These questions haunt us daily. In addition, various forms of media like social media, newspapers, and television are fueling the fear and anxiety further. Thanks to social media applications like Facebook, Whats app, Twitter, YouTube, the news arsenal of this era, everyone is on their phone, surfing through various posts, messages throughout the day, panicking simultaneously. The emotion of fear has always been the greatest survival ...

Social distancing…..you must be kidding me Vijay Gopichandran, Sudharshini Subramaniam, Vinod H Krishnamoorthy Today the rural clinic was very busy. Between the three of us who were in the clinic, we saw more than 100 patients, some of them with very complex problems. One of the patients we saw today was a 50-year-old lady, Kamala (name changed for confidentiality purposes) with fever, cough, and breathlessness for a week. Even as you are reading this, we know the word that is ringing in your mind – Covid-19. The lady belongs to a very poor family, as do most of our patients. She has no history of travel anywhere beyond the nearest town, nor did she have a history of contact with anyone with travel or diagnosed Covid-19. So, we started treatment, as we would for a typical community-acquired lung infection. To anyways be on the safer side, in case community transmission of the virus had started without us noticing it, we advised her and her daughter on home isolation. The d...

Generation Equality Vijay Gopichandran The young girl with the doe eyes stood outside my clinic door peeping inside anxiously looking at me as if asking “may I come in?” I invited her inside with a nod of my head and she walked in with wary steps. Right behind her walked in an elder lady carrying a little baby, not more than 6 months old. The baby was bawling. The young girl looked back at the baby with tired eyes, imploring it to stop crying. The elder lady started rocking the baby to quieten it and said to the young girl, “you tell the doctor about your problems, I will stand with him outside. I will see if he quietens” and she walked out with the baby still crying loudly. I looked at the young girl and asked her how she was. “Doctor, I have a fever with chills for the past 3 days. But I am pregnant now, and so doctors are not giving me medicines for fever. They asked me to take ginger water. I have been taking it, but still, I am feeling very weak and tired”, said the girl....

Birthday Miracle  Vijay Gopichandran Disclaimer: This blog is a deviation from what I usually write. This is an attempt at a fictional short story. “Sister, where is the gauze bin?” yelled Arumugam from the bedside. He was precariously standing with his hands in sterile gloves held up so that it doesn’t soil his 2000 rupees Arrow shirt. He was wearing a flimsy face mask, which did very little to shield the foul smell emanating from the foot ulcer that he was dressing that morning. Fine drops of sweat were oozing down from his forehead which now had wrinkled up with anger lines. He was irritated to note that he had meticulously packed everything required for this elaborate foot dressing, except extra gauze pieces. “These young house-surgeons are so inefficient. They don’t even know how to prepare for a dressing. In our times…..” started Kamala sister as she indignantly walked with a gauze bin towards Arumugam. “Doctor, you have been in this ward for more than ...