“Though the presence of a family member offers comfort to the patient, the move is fraught with risk. There is a high probability of the family member getting infected and then spreading the virus. He or she could turn out to be the super spreader,” Additional Collector Vijaykumar Deshmukh told indianexpress.com on Tuesday
Deshmukh said relatives moving in and out of the COVID-19 ward were not a good sight. “There is risk to the relatives and risk to those in his close contacts when he returns home,” he said.
Story continues below this ad
The district administration instead asked the YCM hospital and the PCMC administration to appoint more ward boys and ‘ayaahs’ to make up for the role of family members.
Dr Rajendra Wable, dean, YCMH dean said that the decision on allowing family members to help critically-ill patients was taken due to acute shortage of staff and in the interest of patients who are mostly senior citizens.
“Since we do not have ventilator beds available for all serious patients, we have kept some of them in wards. Whenever these patients need to go to the toilet, they cannot do so on their own. They need assistance. We cannot provide assistants to each and every patient. Therefore, we had allowed a family member to rush to the aid of the patient whenever required,” he said.
Dr Wable said the family member is supposed to stay put near the hospital premises and is called whenever required.
Story continues below this ad
Dr Wable said after the district administration’s objections, they will have to start recruiting the support staff. “We have 278 support staff. However, some of their family members have contracted Covid, so many are on leave. We will have to advertise or get in touch with private firms seeking recruitment of these staff,” he said.
Advocate Manisha Jadhav, whose elderly relative was admitted to YCM hospital recently, said, “The relative was an old man. Another young relative was taking care of him. The young relative then got infected … This is why I am against the move. There is danger to the life of the family member as well, besides it could lead to spread of the virus. YCM Hospital should find other ways to help the severely ill patient.”
– Stay updated with the latest Pune news. Follow Express Pune on Twitter here and on Facebook here. You can also join our Express Pune Telegram channel here.
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
3 min read
