(Dan Tri) – Doctors have to make difficult decisions about treating patients with Covid-19 in the context of the number of infections and deaths continuously setting records in India.
Dr. Rohan Aggarwal will have to decide which patients to treat at the hospital in New Delhi (Photo: Reuters).
Rohan Aggarwal is only 26 years old.
However, at one of the best hospitals in India, Aggarwal is the doctor who must decide which patients will live and which will die, while families beg the doctor to save their loved ones.
As India’s health system teeters on the brink of collapse amid the second wave of Covid-19, Aggarwal has to make such decisions over the course of a 27-hour shift, including an overnight shift.
Everyone at Holy Family Hospital, from patients, patients’ families to medical staff, knows that the hospital no longer has enough beds, oxygen or ventilators to ensure a chance of survival for everyone.
`Who is saved and who is not saved will be decided by God. We are not appointed to do that – we are only human. But at this time, we are forced to do so.`
India has recorded world records of more than 300,000 infections and more than 3,000 deaths per day in the past two weeks.
To date, India has recorded more than 226,000 deaths from Covid-19 and more than 20.6 million infections.
Patients rushed from one hospital to another.
Racing to treat patients
Dr. Rohan Aggarwal and his colleagues treated 65 patients at the same time (Photo: Reuters).
During his marathon shift, Aggarwal was afraid of what would happen if he himself was infected with the virus, because he knew that even the hospital where he worked could hardly arrange a bed for him.
`We were all wrong to think that the virus had disappeared,` the young doctor said.
When Aggarwal started his shift around 9 a.m., there were four bodies of patients.
Patients and family members were crowded together in every available space, many of them not wearing protective gear, except for a simple cloth mask.
Stretchers are arranged so close that patients can touch each other.
Holy Family is one of the best hospitals in India, but amid the outbreak, the facilities here are also overloaded.
The hospital normally has a capacity of 275 patients, but now has to care for 385 people.
Before starting his shift in the emergency room, Aggarwal initially walked around the beds of Covid-19 patients.
Just a few minutes into his shift, Aggarwal received an emergency call informing him that one of his patients had become ill.
`He is in critical condition,` Aggarwal explained to the patient’s son.
This patient is still luckier than others.
27 working hours
Cramped scene inside the hospital where Dr. Rohan Aggarwal works (Photo: Reuters).
Mahendar Baisoyar, a security guard, was posted outside the emergency room door to ensure the patient’s family did not try to take the hospital bed `by force`.
Last month, relatives of a patient at another hospital in New Delhi used a knife to attack medical staff after the patient died.
Like many other hospitals in New Delhi, Holy Family Hospital also had to `cry for help` on Twitter to beg the authorities to help them ensure oxygen supply for patients.
Aggarwal usually eats lunch in the hospital, but these days, the noise in the hospital becomes too much for him to bear.
`It was a really sad atmosphere. I just wanted to rest for about an hour outside the hospital so I could recover. Because I had to be there for another 24 hours,` Aggarwal said.
After his lunch break, Aggarwal returned to his shift in the emergency room.
`If a patient has a fever and I know they’re sick, but they don’t need oxygen yet, I still can’t admit them to the hospital. That’s the standard. People are dying on the streets without oxygen. So,
Aggarwal spent the night treating the emergency cases that kept coming into the hospital.
Finally, after 27 hours, Aggarwal’s shift ended.
But Aggarwal still had one last job: A friend’s father was sick and the friend asked Aggarwal for help.
The young doctor put on his mask again and went back into the office.
Nick John