Chennai: As the country strives through the second wave of the pandemic, fear and panic are at play among the public.
The battle for survival has put the common man under considerable duress in addition to the information overload on the virus and how to deal with it.
Taking the responsibility of educating the masses, Kautilya School of Public Policy, GITAM Deemed to be University, Hyderabad hosted a ‘Doctors’ Panel: Covid-19 Challenges and Solution in the Indian Perspective’, part of its ‘Let’s Talk Policy’ series.
The panel consisted of Dr Shahid Jameel, Director, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University; Dr Rommel Tickoo, Associate Director, Max Healthcare and Dr U S Vishal Rao, Dean, HealthCare Global Cancer Centre- moderated by Nidhi Razdan, visiting faculty at Kautilya School of Public Policy.
The session was a comprehensive foray into the current Indian healthcare scenario, especially with regard to preparation and handling of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic.
The panellists spoke at length about all facets of the medical sector and how it is handling the upsurge of patients in the second wave. This included a statistical view of things, where these healthcare experts and practitioners feel data could be used to predict upcoming infection patterns.
Another topic of discussion was individual doctors having to face the brunt of the massive volume of cases while being limited by partial information and a lackluster system to fall back on.
There is also the problem of the general public falling prey to misinformation and resorting to home remedies and even self-medicating themselves with steroidal applications. Such methods end up causing far more harm than good and only complicate the doctor’s already monumental task at hand.