‘I feel helpless watching patients die’
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As a doctor who has been trained to save lives, it makes me feel incredibly helpless to watch patients die because I don’t have the beds or resources to help them.
The other day I was in the ward and a lady came in. I didn’t know her. She said, ‘can I talk to you, doctor?’ I said yes. She said, ‘my husband is Covid positive, I don’t have anyone at home, he is very sick, and I need to get him to a hospital, can you please help me and give me a bed?’
I knew that her husband’s oxygen saturation was dropping, and she was trying everywhere to get a bed. And I just had to tell her, I can’t really help you. It was heart-breaking for me because there was nothing I could do.
You don’t know how to comfort patients or their relatives, because we are not able to give any care to them and we have to tell them that we don’t have the resources to admit them, all because of a lack of beds and supplies. We just feel helpless. Seeing all the relatives and to have people dying, even though you know, especially those patients who we could save, but we can’t, just because of lack of infrastructure, it makes you really sad. I can’t describe the emotions, but it’s a very hopeless situation that you face. Every day.
Even in the private hospital where I work, we are running short of things. There are no spare beds. There are no spare ventilators. We are having to conserve oxygen. We have been running low and so far, just at the nick of time we have been getting oxygen for the patients we do have the space to admit. Public hospitals are worse.
There are no spare beds. There are no
spare ventilators.
The patients are just lying on verandas or wherever they can find. They bring their own oxygen if they can get any, and they just wait in queues.
The only way now that you can get a bed, is if you are there at the right time. If you’re lucky, and it sounds very cruel, but if either a patient is discharged or somebody has died, a bed will become empty. If you happen to be there at that time and you require the most care, that is the only way you will get in.
So even if you are critically ill, you might not get a bed. A few days ago, I heard about a man who needed ICU care, but there was no room. The doctors in the emergency department explained to his daughter that they didn’t have the facilities to revive her father if he collapsed while he was waiting. But she didn’t have any other way of going to any other hospital. So they had to wait. After three days she managed to get him into the ICU, but I think it was too late. Her father is still alive, but it is very clear that the delay in getting the treatment he needed has made him extremely ill. His condition is critical and he might not survive.
So it is left to families themselves to try to save the lives of their sick loved ones — it depends if they can run around the city checking at different hospitals. I’ve never seen anything like this.
Every time I go to work, I am scared of bringing Covid-19 back home. Especially because I have two small children of my own. But once you’re in the hospital, you forget about the fear.
It is such a difficult time to be a doctor here right now. We need your help. Thank you for your support through World Vision. It will help doctors like me save lives.