On 9 May, he became one of the youngest doctors to lose their lives to COVID-19.
Dr Dipika was pregnant with their second child when she tested positive for COVID-19 on 11 April 2021. A day after losing her fetus, on 26 April, Dipika breathed her last.
85 year old Dr Mishra, spent five decades of his life working at the SRN Hospital, Prayagraj, but when he caught COVID on 13 April, and his condition started deteriorating drastically, the hospital that was running on full capacity had no ventilators or beds to spare for him.
Dr K K Aggarwal was a physician and cardiologist who dedicated the last couple of years of his life to fighting the COVID pandemic in the country.
25 year old Dr Maha Basheer died of COVID complications on 27 April, just days after losing her fetus.
All through her pregnancy, Maha continued to work at the Kanachur Medical College in Mangalore, where she was pursuing her masters.
"May be last Good Morning. I may not meet you here on this platform. Take care all. Body dies. Soul doesn't. Soul is immortal," reads Dr Manisha Jadhav's last, farewell post on Facebook.
51 year old Manisha was Chief Medical Officer at the Sewri TB hospital, Mumbai. Died 19 April
"A rare doctor disinterested in money; his only ambition to serve the most needy. For many years, he worked in our homeless street work. Until his end, he was running our COVID clinic for the homeless." wrote Harsh Mander, eulogising his friend on Twitter.
Dr Rajendra Kapila was a renowned infectious diseases expert & Professor at Rutgers, New Jersey Medical School.
Visiting India to care for family, he was supposed to have left for the states in early April, but contracted COVID himself and had to be hospitalised, and died soon.
30 year old Dr Shubham Upadhyay had been looking after COVID patients for months at the Bundelkhand Medical College when he himself contracted the infection.
Dr Shubham breathed his last on 25 November, after a month long battle with COVID.
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"How does one honor and protect the sanctity of oneโs own Blackness while also giving so much of oneself to a health care system that in many ways continues to dismiss, ignore, and mistreat Black people?" nejm.org/doi/full/10.10โฆ
"It was a random day just like any other when I suddenly stopped being just a Black person in America. I looked around at the sea of white faces that seemed to fill every space I entered, and I realized for the first time that I was now a Black person in medicine."
"Until fairly recently, it was easier than one might think to minimize the effects of racism on my life. But the more I learned about the physiology of the human body, the more I was forced to confront the degradation of the Black body."
Lancet Citizens' Commission on Reimagining India's Health System
India's resurgence of COVID-19: urgent actions needed thelancet.com/journals/lanceโฆ
First, the organisation of essential health services must be decentralised. A one-size-fits-all approach is untenable since the numbers of COVID-19 cases and health services differ substantially from district to district
Second, there must be a transparent national pricing policy and caps on the prices of all essential health servicesโeg, ambulances, oxygen, essential medicines, and hospital care.
Many of us who have been health activists have been crying hoarse for years about the need to strengthen our health system, focus on public health
Last summer brought policy and public focus to this dire need. One thought lessons were learnt.
Clearly not.
There is INCREDIBLE stress on the health system right now in many parts of the country. Health professionals over worked, burning out, turning positive with families in droves. And sometimes cannot find beds for themselves or their family in the hospitals they are working in.
I have never seen this kind of a situation before. Lots of people reaching out for help. To provide care, advice, help patients and those in medical need is what health providers are trained for. It is what this is unique about health as a profession.
THE VACCINE DILEMMA
The government has announced an intent to go ahead with vaccination as of 16th Jan 2021 with both Covishield and Covaxin. There is going to be no choice. You will only be able to receive one of the two, whatever is allotted to you by the govt.
While you have an option of opt-out, it will put potential vaccinees in a tough situation. You have to decide for yourselves based on publicly available (or the lack fo it) information-- on safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy on both vaccines.
If you are allotted Covishield, you will follow the current protocol as described and practiced in the dry runs.
With regards to #COVISHIELD which will be rolled out on 16th onward, the CDSCO SEC approval requires the recipient to be given a factsheet prior to the vaccination. Has this been prepared--has anyone seen it?
Was it distributed in the dry-runs? Available widely?#COVID19#vaccine
So both these documents are indeed available (factsheet for recipient and the leaflet for the medical provider). Thanks to @Dr_Aqsa_Shaikh for pointing that these are available on the SIIL Website. Hope the factsheet will be available at all vaccine sites. Sharing here for info
The #COVID19 pandemic shows the need for building capacity within the country for critically evaluating ethical issues in health research
We @SangathIndia#Bhopal hub are delighted to have been funded by @thakurfdn to to create an online/digital course on health research ethics
The project is called DRISHTi (Developing capacity in health Research ethics Training) and the digital course will be targeted at health professionals as well as general public. The course is proposed to be 8-10 weeks long, completely digital in format and in the English language
The course has the potential to be a key contributor in developing capacity within India to conduct and evaluate health research from an ethics perspective.