Suresh (name changed), who used to work as a casual labourer, has not moved much from his bed in the past few months, ever since his body was half-paralysed. His wife, who underwent a bypass surgery recently, can only be of limited help due to her health condition. Both of them, living at Kunnukuzhy here, wait eagerly for the government’s palliative care team to arrive for their periodic visits.
This week, a team of doctors from the nearest primary health centre, nurses, ASHA workers and health inspectors brought along food too, having understood their plight on a previous visit.
In Kerala, the first State to have a palliative care policy since 2008, the palliative care workers of the local bodies have been working tirelessly to take care of the bed-ridden, by taking all precautions during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We cannot avoid house visits, because many depend on us. Many of the bed-ridden patients use the catheter for passing urine, which has to be changed periodically. They also develop bedsores. Some of them have wounds which have to be dressed periodically. In some houses with children, the family members have requested us politely to postpone our visits until the pandemic passes. Even in such cases, the ASHA workers keep a tab on them to ensure that medicine are regularly supplied,” says Arunima, a staff nurse.
Each of the local bodies in the State has considerable number of patients under their care now.
Honorarium
The nurses are provided an honorarium of ₹15,000. According to M.S. Sheji, health inspector with the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, the civic body takes care of 4,806 patients regularly, with 10 units deployed for the work.
“As per the government’s norms, each team has to take care of at least eight patients daily, but these nurses end up visiting more than 20 sometimes. The nurses are putting up a spirited work despite the meagre honorariums,” says Mr. Sheji.
Extra visits
“There are some patients who need special care, whom the teams try to take care with extra visits. For instance, there is this family where the mother is in the third stage of cancer, being taken care of by two school-going girls, because their father, a security guard at an apartment, has not been able to visit them since the lockdown started,” Mr. Sheji says.
