#Gujarat declared #Mucormycosis an epidemic and made it a notifiable disease on May 20, but...
This should've been done much, much earlier and still, gaps remain.
A Thread.
Centre says Health is a state subject & yet, #Gujarat the state burdened most with #Mucormycosis in India, waited for an appeal from the GoI before deeming it an epidemic & making it notifiable.
Rajasthan, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha & Haryana did this before the letter.
1/n
There were 1,237 active #Mucormycosis patients in six major hospitals of #Gujarat on May 20.
Three days earlier, on May 17, Gujarat had 1,040 cases in these six hospitals.
And still, Mucormycosis was not made notifiable even after the state had the highest cases in India.
2/n
Gujarat govt statement read, "...All diagnosis & treatment will be done as per ICMR guidelines. All cases will be regularly reported to GoI."
Irony is that 10/18 experts who formed @ICMRDELHI guidelines released on May 9, are from Gujarat.
Since they handled most cases.
3/n
Major point of concern with #Mucormycosis in #Gujarat is that the highest number of cases not in Ahmedabad (371), but in Rajkot Civil Hospital (437).
More concerning is that patients from these two cities are going to Bhavnagar since there is waitlist for surgeries here.
4/n
In bad news from the clinical side apart from early onset in Covid+ patients, doctors at @civilhospamd say they've seen some mild Covid patients with diabetes who were just under home isolation & hadn't received steroids but had still contracted black fungus.
Lastly, now that #Mucormycosis has been made notifiable in #Gujarat will the case and death data be made publicly available?
There is no data coming in from pvt hospitals but patients have been flowing into govt hospitals just to get access to #AmphotericinB
6/n
Here is today's piece on the state of #Mucormycosis in #Gujarat , the policy of making Amphotericin B available to private hospitals and the fact that it has now been declared an epidemic.
SVP and LG hospital in Ahmedabad have out up boards saying they've run out of #AmphotericinB anti-fungal medication used for treatment of #Mucormycosis
This comes a day after #Gujarat formulated a distribution strategy for private hospitals where patients are struggling.
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After 15-y-o son, his father becomes 17th casualty in mystery outbreak that has caused grief in the remote border villages of Kutch district in Gujarat.
Our detailed breakdown on clinical symptoms of patients, the social determinants & which deadly diseases have been ruled out.
Even as the Gujarat government maintains the outbreak doesn't appear contagious, not only has the death toll risen to 17, experts in Kutch have found at least two household clusters but say it is too early to say whether the outbreak is infectious or not.
Results from the first six blood samples from Kutch, sent to National Institute of Virology (NIV) for testing, have come back negative for Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), Hantavirus, and Nipah virus.
Covid, Typhoid, Leptospirosis & Swine Flu have also been ruled out.
Many experts say the third #COVID19 wave may not be as deadly to children as is being hyped. They may be right, so what?
What's happening is that years of pending upgrades of pediatric systems are being completed now 'cause nobody wants dead kids on their hands.
A Thread.
1/n
Pediatricians in tertiary hospitals have for years, been complaining about the lack of staff doctors, nurses with PICU/NICU training, neonatal ventilators _ the fact that children on the brink of death keep getting sent to them w/o being stabilised.
Things could change now.
2/n
In Nov 2017, protests erupted at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital after 57 infants died in 15 days around Diwali, most of them from peripheral districts.
Gujarat Assembly elections were held the next month.
Nobody sought the strengthening of peripheral pediatric infrastructure.
For the first time since fungal infections ran rampant in Gujarat during the 2nd #Covid wave, there is a visible drop in the no. of patients in eight major govt hospitals of Guj.
June 2: 1,940
June 6: 1,982 🔼
June 10: 1,866🔽
Caveat: While drop in the number of #Mucormycosis patients in major govt hospitals of #Gujarat is indeed good news, we must take into account that not all hospitals have seen this drop, a few have even seen cases rising. Still no data from pvt hospitals.