Doctors recount challenges
Hospital staff says that they had to ensure the right treatment, make sure no one else got infected and also keep the patients in good spirit
GURUGRAM: Before bidding goodbye to the staff at Medanta Hospital, 70-year-old Emilia Giuseppina Antonietti expressed her gratitude to the doctors who treated her for giving her hope and surety in life.
The last 20 days were challenging for Emilia and 13 other Italian tourists, who were undergoing treatment for Covid-19 at Gurugram’s Medanta Hospital. Dr Yatin Mehta, who is an intensive care expert and Dr Sushila Kataria, a physician, were leading the treatment. On Monday, 10 tourists, including Emilia, were discharged after testing negative in the two confirmatory tests.
“They all were to be treated without letting their health deteriorate further,” said Mehta, who coordinated with doctors at the ITBP quarantine centre in Delhi on March 4, the day when the 14 tourists were to be shifted to the hospital.
“Logistically, it was difficult to organise everything for the treatment. At that time, they were not too sick, though they had tested positive for Covid-19, except for one woman, who had difficulty in responding to a certain treatment,” he said.
She is still undergoing treatment. “Her oxygen is still borderline but her condition has stabilised,” said Mehta.
Besides ensuring that the right treatment was given to the patients, for Mehta, it was equally important to ensure the safety of the medical staff, including the four nurses who were taking care of patients in the isolation ward.
“The number of people was to be limited, as we did not want to subject them to any situation,” he said.
Forty-two-year-old Kataria, a physician, worked closely with the patients and used to spend six to eight hours in a protective bodysuit, glasses, masks and gloves inside the isolation ward. She said, “In the initial days, it was 12 hours for the nurses. Wearing a bodysuit means that one cannot come out of the isolation wards for six to eight hours.
There was an adjoining room to rest for a short while.”
The team exchanged every diagnostic and radiology report on Whatsapp. “Managing sick patients on the floor is not easy. We fixed the cameras in the isolation ward to keep an eye on every minute detail,” said Mehta.
For both the doctors, it was an emotionally challenging task. “Like every family who is concerned about the members, mine were too. I told my wife to start sleeping in another room but she refused. My daughterin-law is pregnant and is in Gujarat. It was not fair to subject her to any complication if I were carrying any contamination. I almost lost my voice after giving a lecture in Rewari and had fever, two days after the tourists were shifted. I had to get myself checked. Thankfully, the results were negative,” said Mehta.
Likewise, Kataria’s husband shifted to a farmhouse in the city as he suffers from inflammatory arthritis. Kataria’s children are staying with her in the same house, but in different rooms.
“I think it was more challenging for the patients,” said Kataria. “Even today (Monday), one patient who is still undergoing treatment (not on ventilator support) asked me if he is going to survive. He is very apprehensive,” she said.
Mehta agreed. “Being in a country where you can’t be with your family or even be visited by them is disappointing,” he said. Still, the team tried to motivate them despite the language barrier.
“Communication was 90% non-verbal. After every round of check, we used to do thumbs -up,” said Kataria. Also, a Whatsapp group was created where officials from the Italian Embassy were included, for daily updates. “Patients who were in better health used phones and watched television. The Italian Embassy had sent books for them,” said Mehta.