Annada Shankar Das keeps telling himself not to attend phone calls at odd hours. But when his phone rings, he does answer. Working in western Odisha district of Nuapada, which is badly affected in the second wave of COVID-19 , Dr. Das, an Ayush doctor, has attended close to 1,000 patients in last two months, several of those at odd hours.
The moment he gets calls from patients, he writes down their co-morbidities, soothes the nerves of anxious relatives, helps critical patients in hospital admission and distributes drug kits.
“If you avoid or miss a phone call, you will actually jeopardise one’s life,” he said.
The Ayush doctor heads a mobile health unit, comprising a pharmacist, Auxiliary Nursing Midwifery (ANM) and an attendant, that reaches out to people who cannot access community health centre. There are 90 such units in KBK (Kalahandi Balangir Koraput) region which was identified as a backward pocket in Odisha and special intervention was made to uplift people’s economic standard.
In the second wave, his team has been entrusted to keep tab on 30 villages under five panchayats in Nuapada’s Khariar block. Had it been normal time, the job of the mobile unit would have been much easier.
“As we entered the month of April, we got to know that the time ahead was tough. By the time we had made up our mind to face the crisis, the COVID-19 had already knocked doors in villages. People were unaware about preliminary symptoms. So they ignored initially. When deaths started occurring, frantic calls poured in,” Dr. Das said.
Fear of infection
While undertaking screening in the community, the team members find it difficult to stay calm and deal with the constant fear of contracting the infection.
“We are not paid high salary to risk our lives in pandemic like this. But, our team members are motivated that they are saving lives in villages where people have little access to healthcare system,” he said.
As of now, the team of Dr. Das has conducted tests on several hundred people, 923 of them have tested positive for coronavirus in 30 villages. As many as 176 patients are active cases.
Psycho-social support
Treating COVID-19 patients in a hospital set-up is no doubt a challenge, but providing psycho-social support and guiding people to get admitted in hospital especially in villages are no lesser tasks for health workers who are on ground since the outbreak of the pandemic.
The worst part of the duty for the mobile unit is to inform family members about death of their near and dear ones.
“I have come across several families losing breadwinners in the pandemic. We struggle to pass on the message of death to poor families which do not know where the next meal would come from,” he said.
Cremation problems
As the COVID-19 instilled fear in society, family members often desert the diseased. Dr. Das has so far helped cremate 11 bodies when villagers have shunned the community responsibility in the fear of catching the virus.
“In Garramunda panchayat, a couple had four sons. The man lost his wife to COVID-19 on May 8. A week later the man too succumbed. Nobody came forward to cremate him. We had no option, but to arrange his pyre,” he said.
The situation is steadily improving in remote villages. The COVID-19 deaths in succession had scared people and those who were not ready to take precautions learnt the lesson the hard way.
Since the first wave, 20,852 persons have tested positive for coronavirus in Nuapada. Forty six people have died. In the tiny district, the active caseload is 2,219.
