Doctors and nurses who are on the coronavirus pandemic frontlines have said that they have pushed themselves into physical and mental exhaustion as they are continuously fighting to keep patients alive. This burnout is specially seen after a terrifying month of Covid-19 that has devastated India’s health system.

Dr. Mousimi Das was treating her own mother at her Kolkata hospital with countless patients. A colleague’s father too died around her and she was working 48 hours in a stretch without any break. She has one message for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, that they are exhausted, frustrated as well as depressed. Her voice was breaking with fatigue as she said over the phone that Please see and hear us. If the government doesn’t listen to doctors, nurses and staff who are working on the ground, they will never be able to improve the healthcare infrastructure.

Das is not an alone one but India’s 1.3 million doctors are facing burnout, anxiety and insomnia related to the fight against the worst coronavirus outbreak. A dozen doctors have described this as a nightmare scenario with constant high-risk exposure to the coronavirus, with a never-ending flow of patients and deaths. The long hours in sweat-drenched PPE kits make even washroom breaks very difficult. 

According to the count maintained by the Indian Medical Association, over 1,200 doctors have lost their lives in India that reported approximately 27 million COVID-19 cases.

Dr Anita Gadgil, head of surgery department at a Mumbai hospital said that total the volume of death is hard to bear. Personal losses are combining with uncertainty and this pandemic is leading to helplessness and frustration among the doctors. They are just living day-to-day and duty-by-duty. Several doctors said they and their colleagues have turned to smoking and alcohol to numb their minds after working in long shifts.

Nurses in New Delhi also had gone on strike in December as the government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences had not paid their three months salaries. The industrial action ended only when a high court intervention had forced the federal government to assure their wages would be paid soon.

In Uttar Pradesh, 16 doctors resigned en-masse in the last month from their roles in government health organizations as they were blamed by the authorities for the worsening virus situation. Resident doctors at 4 government hospitals in Mumbai too threatened a hunger strike as they did not receive a mandated increase in their COVID duty payment. The increase was cleared after this.

Dr Monali Mohan, who was working with international non-government organizations for improving the state-run health facilities said that a good health care plan, decent quarantine facilities, better salaries and safety equipment are important to guarantee the medical staff that they are properly cared for. She further said that delayed salaries or absence of monetary incentivization makes the doctors think that the authorities don’t think about the hard work they are doing.

Also, there are safety concerns, as many angry relatives often take their frustration and anguish out on healthcare staff. Deaths due to lack of medicines, oxygen supply and hospital beds have made the situation worse.

Source: The Print