Dad, Husband, 🐕 dad.
Thoracic surgeon
Director @TataMemorial
@CancerGridIndia #CancerEarthshot
@cspramesh.bsky.social
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The Ministry of Health in Sri Lanka, with whom we are in touch with regularly, have shared a list of essential drugs and consumables that they are running out of critically.
Let me explain-Asha Nivas is a place where patients treated at @TataMemorial and @ACTREC_TMC can stay during their cancer treatment. Consider that 86% of patients being treated by us come from outside Mumbai, 60% from outside Maharashtra, 65% hailing from low socioeconomic strata
The #COVID_19 pandemic had realigned our lives, and for many, especially in healthcare, increased their work considerably. Healthcare workers globally found themselves working overtime to handle the pandemic, while their domestic work increased thanks to the lockdown 2/n
We’ve heard of the #Delta, the #DeltaPlus & unknown future variants which may be either more transmissible or more lethal than previous ones. This has either created panic, or worse, a sense of futility about both vaccines and precautionary measures to avoid the infection 
Let’s face it – the second wave caught all of us by surprise by the sheer ferocity with which it unleashed itself. The inadequacies and frailties of our healthcare systems lay exposed. After nearly three months of helplessness, we are limping back to some semblance of control.
We looked at volumes of services in 41 cancer centres that were part of the @CancerGridIndia over a 3 month period during the pandemic in 2020 and the same 3 months in 2019.
The truth is that we don’t know everything about it, but let’s start by calling it what it is – “Mucor”. And anybody who claims that they know all about it is hmm…., let's say, “factually incorrect”
We have 2 options – one, rant & rail against the ‘system’ and lament how it has let us down; second, do whatever we can to avoid getting infected & if infected, minimize adverse consequences to ourselves & others. If you belong to the first, you can stop reading now
We identified 3 problems and 2 facts
First, this was another #MultiArmMultiStage #MAMS study design; @MRCCTU made this highly efficient trial design globally acclaimed with #STAMPEDE. The more recent #RECOVERY trial was another example of this.
While the good news is that our death rates haven’t been as bad as some of the other countries (we might debate the accuracy of death reporting), but with a population of 1.35 billion people, the absolute numbers are still sobering. And rural India is just beginning to get hit 
