Healthcare workers stretched

SHILLONG, May 24: Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers engaged in the fight against COVID-19 in the state are overburdened and stretched.
NEIGRIHMS Director P. Bhattacharya said more than 125 healthcare workers of the institute have either been infected or are under quarantine, which has added to the pressure.
The non-infected healthcare workers are discharging their duties for 12 hours a day in PPEs as a result, leaving them exhausted.
“If we had adequate staff, the pressure on us would have been less,” Dr Bhattacharya said, lamenting the death of a young nurse due to COVID-related complications recently.
Shillong Civil Hospital’s Medical Superintendent Dr Andreas Dkhar agreed with the NEIGRIHMS head. “We have asked for additional manpower from the government.Although many patients are getting discharged every day, the COVID wards get full by evening,” he said.
A senior city-based government doctor said that the healthcare workers in the state have been going through this scenario for a long time now as most of the hospitals are full while many asymptomatic people are being attended to at the community corona care centres.
Each of these centres has been assigned a doctor and two nurses and their responsibility includes transferring any patient to a hospital if his or her condition deteriorates.
Dr Kamaljeet Singh Sehdave, a dentist actively involved with such a community centre said the load on the healthcare workers in the state is no different from their counterparts elsewhere in the country.
Quite a few nurses and doctors have lost their lives in the line of duty. The government had urged people to overburden the healthcare workers by adhering to the COVID protocols and staying home.