UK-based doctors of Indian heritage are deploying telemedicine to their colleagues in the coronavirus-stricken nation to help them battle the escalating crisis there. India is one of the worst-hit countries in the world, recording a new global record of 401,993 new cases on the 1st of May taking its total number to 19.1 million.
Members of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) are working to help their counterparts get some breathing space as case numbers grow.
BAPIO member Professor Parag Singhal told Sky News that they are trying to do as much as they can in the form of fundraising to send equipment in the form of oxygen concentrators, creating capacity for ICU beds.
They are also trying to offer help to their exhausted colleagues in India, doctors are overstretched, they’re working too hard. They are offering long-distant consultations and advice to patients who do not need critical care, and also analysing the results of tests conducted in Indian hospitals.
Prof Singhal said that BAPIO’s telemedicine project so far had 250 volunteers, and they are aiming to get 1,000. One way BAPIO volunteers are helping out remotely is by analysing the results of CT scans.
Singhal said one of the big problems was that many people in India were in “panic mode” and were presenting at hospitals when their illness could be managed at home. The problem seems to be that this appears to be panic mode.
BAPIO is trying to avoid alienating doctors on the ground in India by seeming to bypass them and approach patients directly. The local practitioners have to be kept on board because they are the ultimate people prescribing medicines.
Instead, BAPIO has been setting up a dialogue with hospitals and smaller clinics and health centres many of which are in remote locations. That has been welcomed very well by our Indian partners. BAPIO is hoping to raise half a million pounds to fund the assistance programme to Indian hospitals.
A hospital in Gujarat state in western India faced a fresh disaster on Friday night after a fire on a Covid-19 ward killed 18 patients. A little over a week ago, on April 23, a fire in an intensive care unit killed 13 Covid-19 patients in the Virar area on the outskirts of Mumbai.
The government has been criticised for the pace of its vaccination rollout. Just under 10% of Indians have received their first dose, and only 1.5% have had both, despite the country being one of the world’s biggest producers of vaccines.