Families demand help from PCMC to search for beds for home-isolated patients in case of severe symptoms

The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has set up a call centre, the work for which has been outsourced.

Preparations of 200 bed Covid care center in progress at SNDT College in Pune on Friday. (Express photo by Ashish Kale)

With Covid-19 cases surging in Pimpri-Chinchwad, 70 to 80 per cent of asymptomatic persons or those with mild symptoms continue to be in home isolation. Families of such patients have demanded that the PCMC should help them with hospital admissions in case they develop severe symptoms. The civic body has said it was closely monitoring all home-isolated patients by making at least one phone call every day. By Thursday evening, Pimpri-Chinchwad had 15,348 patients in home isolation.

“Every day, we are making one call to patients to get an update… We will make the call till the 14-day isolation period is over,” said PCMC health chief Dr Anil Roy on Friday.

The PCMC has set up a call centre, the work for which has been outsourced. “As of now, we are making 10,000 calls a day to patients. It will go up as the patient count increases. In the next two to three days, we should be making 15,000 calls a day if the number remains around that figure,” Dr Roy said.

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But families of home-isolated patients have to be alert if their symptoms suddenly take a turn for the worse. In such cases, families have to start searching for an oxygen or ventilator bed as per oxygen saturation levels or overall condition of the patient.

“Our job is get an update from patients and guide and counsel them through a team of doctors. In case the patient’s condition deteriorates, their families will have to search for the hospital bed. We have provided two helpline numbers where we give information regarding beds available at civic and private hospitals. The helpline numbers are 020-67331151 and 020-67331152,” he said.

Families, however, are saying if a patient is in home isolation, the concerned hospital or the PCMC should take responsibility of admitting the patient in case they develop severe symptoms. “If the concerned hospital or the PCMC cannot take the responsibility, then at least they should give proper guidance till the patient finds a bed. Many times, the helpline number is busy or they simply provide the number of hospitals and hang up. If we call the hospitals, they say they have no beds,” said Dhanashree Patil, a resident of Gurav Pimple, whose condition worsened after six days of home isolation.

“My family searched for a bed the entire day. Even my office people searched for a bed but without luck. It was only 24 hours later, through an acquaintance, I got a bed at Auto Cluster facility. By that time, my oxygen saturation level had dipped to 75 per cent and I was diagnosed as a critical patient,” said Patil, who has since recovered from Covid-19.

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The family of Shrikant Gaikwad of Kasarwadi also had to make tremendous efforts to find a bed after his condition deteriorated after two days of home isolation. “It is not an easy task to find a bed if a patient in home isolation worsens. The PCMC making a call per day is fine. But it should also extend a helping hand when it comes to hospitalisation of a patient in home isolation,” said his brother Shridhar Gaikwad. Shrikant died a few days after being admitted.

The PCMC administration has moved a proposal before the civic standing committee for an Rs 2.34 crore to be spent on the call centre setup for patients in home isolation. According to the proposal, the PCMC will incur an expenditure of Rs 13 per patient. The work has been allotted to a private party for a period of three months.

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In another decision, the PCMC has set up a crematorium coordination helpline for families who need to cremate Covid-19 patients. It will be a 24-hour facility on 020-67331155.

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“The objective behind the move is to reduce the waiting period for performing funeral rites,” said civic officials.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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