DR GOPAL JHA 2 recovered mohalla clinic docs returned to a caring response
NEW DELHI: Patients at the Maujpur and Baburpur mohalla clinics in northeast Delhi welcomed their doctors back last week after a two-month hiatus. The doctor couple working in the clinics had been diagnosed with Covid-19 in March.
Dr Gopal Jha (51) was the first health care worker in the city to test positive for the viral infection, on March 21. His wife, Dr Alpana Jha (49), tested positive a few days later, along with their daughter.
He was also part of the first cluster of cases that were reported from Delhi. His colony in Dilshad Garden was one of the city’s first containment zones.
“I was a little apprehensive on my first day back. I kept wondering whether patients would be scared to come to my clinic. Everybody in the area knew my wife and I had the infection. But the reception we received was quite the opposite. My regular patients actually came just to ask about my health and well-being. It was nice to talk to them again,” Dr Gopal Jha said.
The clinic was sanitised and kept ready while he recovered from severe symptoms of the disease at Safdarjung hospital.
He was discharged in the first week of April.
He started developing symptoms the day after he got a call from the district authorities asking him to get tested at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital near his house, after one of the patients he had referred there tested positive. He was moved to Safdarjung hospital when he got high fever, cough, loose motion, and had to be put on oxygen therapy for breathing difficulties. His wife and daughter had mild symptoms.
“At first I developed a mild fever, which I thought could be because of all the stress... Then, the fever shot up a day later and I started coughing two days after that. I had loose motion and high fever for all 14 fourteen days. The worst was the feeling that I could not breathe. The doctors had to put me on oxygen, after I told them I was feeling a little breathless,” he said.
“I did not expect I would have the infection. I maintained social distance when the patient came in. She would have been in my clinic for no longer than five minutes, and I cleaned all the surfaces after she left,” said Dr Jha.