On December 18, the Supreme Court while hearing a petition on Covid treatment observed that health is a fundamental right and that Right to Health includes affordable treatment. The apex court urged that state governments to ramp up their health care facilities and also to put a cap on the fees charged by private hospitals. Due to unprecedented Pandemic, everybody in the world is suffering, one way or the other. It is a world war against COVID-19. Therefore, there shall be Government-public partnership ‘to avoid world war against Covid 19.’The Court added that there shall be more and more testing done and Government should be transparent in informing the public about the number of tests carried by declaring the correct facts and figures of people infected by Covid, otherwise people will be misled and they will be under the impression that everything is alright and they will become negligent.
Taking a considerate view of those who cannot afford the high cost of treatment, the Court observed that the pandemic has already caused immense economic and financial hardship for the common people and with hospital costs skyrocketing, they will be in penury. The apex Court told the states to invoke the clauses of the Disaster Management Act to bring down the exorbitant health care costs in private hospitals.
Closer home those who have tested Covid positive and been admitted to private hospitals have a very sad story to tell. Doctors and nurses don’t want to come anywhere the patient. Seeing this paranoia among health workers, Covid patients are frustrated and depressed and wonder if they are better off being treated at home since the treatment narrows down to taking of medicines and/or injections. Only patients with co-morbidities generally feel the need for hospitalization in case they run low on oxygen and need to be intubated by specialists for supplemental oxygen.
There is no doubt at all that testing in Meghalaya has come down drastically and there is urgent need to step up testing especially now that the festive season is at hand and people are seen crowding inside shops and market places. Past experience has shown that a lockdown should be the last alternative since it dealt a death blow to the economy and many had lost their jobs on account of it. Hence a lockdown is unlikely in the near future, yet the Covid cases have been rising in India and winter just seems to trigger the infections. After Diwali the Covid figures had spiked up. Now Christmas and New Year are approaching and while there is need to be extremely careful in maintaining Covid protocols, people seem to have decided to lower their guard. This will have serious consequences.