Tirupati: Non-Covid patients BEAR the brunt of pandemic

Tirupati: During the Coronavirus pandemic, the non-Covid patients have been facing the brunt with several hospitals have shut their doors for outpatient services. The non-Covid patients fail to get timely medical care from any of the hospitals and the serious cases among them have been losing their lives. The deaths caused by other than Covid like cardiac arrests, diabetes, cancer, neurological disorders among others have been outnumbering Covid deaths daily but they all go unnoticed.

Ignoring the non-Covid patients completely, the entire government machinery has been focusing only on the Covid related services. They have been working out to bring in more Aarogyasri network hospitals to offer Covid services. Several doctors were of the view that the government should give equal importance to Covid and non-Covid services from now onwards for which several steps have to be taken.

As SVIMS and Ruia hospitals have stopped OPs for various reasons and private hospitals are not allowing emergency care, patients have become directionless about where they need to go to get treatment. Private managements were saying that without testing any patient for Covid it would be difficult for them to admit and do procedures as it involves various legal issues as well.

With this, several patients with cardiac problems and other emergencies were in a state of dilemma and going from one hospital to another and even losing their lives in the process. It was said that due to various issues involved, the professional societies of doctors have issued guidelines suggesting postponement of all elective surgeries including angiograms.

Senior physician Dr P Krishna Prasanthi told The Hans India that Covid test availability has become a major problem due to which private hospitals could not venture to admit the patients. Government has to provide Rapid Antigen testing facilities to those hospitals which opt for non-Covid services so that they can attend to emergency services at any time.

Most of the patients have been missing follow-ups for the past six months which may cause serious repercussions on their health. It is not at all advisable to postpone non-Covid services anymore on which the government has to seriously focus on this. By providing testing facilities at designated private hospitals, the load on the government will also come down and the non-Covid mortality rate will also be decreased, she felt.

District Secretary of AP Private Hospital and Nursing Homes Association (APNA) Dr G Parthasarathi Reddy has also expressed similar views and said Covid tests availability has to be increased by making Rapid Antigen tests or TrueNat machines available in private hospitals. He also said that the private hospitals have been facing severe staff crunch and the government should help them in this regard also so that they can extend general services.