It's a long wait for medicines for Covid-19 patients at home

Visakhapatnam: The medical attention received by those availing home isolation appears to be far from reality in comparison to what the health officials say.

Those availing home isolation are deprived of medical kits for the past one week. Followed by the shortage of these kits, staff at the primary health centres is not encouraging tests for coronavirus when people walk in.

While the daily Covid-19 caseload continues to go up, preference towards home isolation has also seen a considerable rise.

At present, over 1,100 coronavirus patients are availing home isolation and more than 100 have been hospitalised in Visakhapatnam to get treated for the infection.

According to the health officials, patients availing home isolation will be provided medical kits as soon as they test positive for the virus. With the support of the area volunteers, the patients are being monitored by the ANMs.

Though medical kits containing medicines and vitamin tablets need to be given to the patients as soon as they opt for home isolation, not many seem to get the medication even after four to six days of testing positive.

"When I preferred home isolation after testing positive for Covid-19, I did not get a medical kit from the ANM I was assigned to. Two days later, my wife too tested positive. Now, it has been six days since we received the medicines. The undue delay is certainly a cause for concern," shares a resident of Viman Nagar with The Hans India.

Sharing similar concerns, another coronavirus patient who preferred to stay at home, says, "Despite continuous follow up, we are yet to get the medicines. When we contact the ANM for the home isolation medical kit, she responds saying that there is no stock available at the moment."

When district health officials were contacted, they denied any such supply shortage. "There is absolutely no dearth of supply of kits across the district. At present, we have a stock of 40,000 medical kits. Even in each health centre, minimum 50 to 100 stocks will be made available at any point of time," says PS Surya Narayana, District Medical and Health Officer.

Earlier, most of the coronavirus patients were admitted to the Covid hospitals wherein the patients were under the direct supervision of the doctors.

Now, with an increase in the count of patients preferring home isolation, minimum care appears to be lagging behind. Moreover, absence of timely treatment and medication often prove to be fatal.