Safety of kids on top of Telangana government's mind

Hyderabad: The Telangana government is set to face another big challenge of safeguarding the children from the Covid menace in the wake of reports that younger sections are more vulnerable to the deadly virus during the possible third wave of corona which may hit in June or July this year.

While officials claim that efforts were on to strengthen the medical infrastructure to create separate pediatric Covid wards in some identified corona hospitals, what exactly are the efforts are not yet revealed.

All that one knows as of now is that the lone government-funded children hospital - Niloufer Research and Medical Centre for Women and Children -- has developed a treatment protocol forCovid patients aged between 2 and 12 years and is providing treatment to the infected children.

The pediatric doctors in the Niloufer hospital were ascertaining the possibility of health risks to children in the third wave which may play a havoc with the lives of the people, officials said, adding that 2.7 per cent of Covid victims in Telangana were the children below 10 years in the second wave. The authorities feel that this percentage may go up to 10 per cent in the next wave, if the Covid preventive measures among children were not implemented strictly.

Experts say that the government was already struggling hard to provide treatment to adults. A separate administrative mechanism and doctors' workforce needs to be constituted to provide treatment to Covid-affected children in the districts and also in Hyderabad. A plan of action to ramp up medical facilities exclusively for children by creating special Covid wards in all hospitals is a must to check the spread of virus among children in the next wave when the new variant of the virus dubbed as Singapore variant threatens to hit the country.

It is also most important to see that there was no black marketing of medicines. During the present wave of Covid-19, getting life-saving drugs and injections had become a major problem and an injection whose MRP is Rs 28,000 is being sold over Rs 40,000 depending upon the demand. If a patient requires 4 or 6 doses of injection, financially he is suffering a lot.

When contacted, Health officials said that the department has begun the exercise to identify the specialist doctors in pediatric general medicine, pulmonology, ENT, etc. They also say that a separate monitoring mechanism has been constituted in the Health department to ascertain the spread of corona virus among children in the Covid-hit areas of Greater Hyderabad, Rangareddy , Medchal - Malkajigiri, Nalgonda and Vikarabad districts.

"Nearly 10 to 12 children were being admitted with Covid symptoms to the Niloufer hospital on a daily basis. A top official said that separate treatment protocol has been adopted for the treatment of children affected by Covid. The protocol suggests that powerful anti-viral drugs should not be used unless it is an absolute necessity. What measures the government proposes to take to see that medicines are easily available is not yet known.