No phones, no internet, no public transport: Health care a major casualty in Kashmir

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 10/12/2019 5:33:21 PM

JAMMU, Oct 11: More than two months after the Kashmir lockdown, the biggest casualty remains the health care facilities and their accessibility to the needy patients.
With no phone lines, no internet facilities and no public transport, not only are the patients unable to avail of the digitalized health-care schemes for the poor, they are even unable to call for an ambulance or reach out for doctors on time.
A report in New York Times last week quoted doctors from the Valley as confirming that the communication blockade was possibly becoming a factor in loss of some lives.
“At least a dozen patients have died because they could not call an ambulance or could not reach the hospital on time, the majority of them with heart-related disease,’’ a doctor in a Kashmir hospital said, according to the report. It added that the doctors were scared to speak or be named and that many doctors interviewed said that they could be fired for even speaking with reporters.
Some of them have even accused security forces of directly harassing and intimidating medical personnel. One doctor was picked up and detained from Press Enclave in Srinagar more than a month ago while trying to raise the issue of the precarious condition of health-care. He has not been released since.
The report mentioned that several health officials, based on hospital records, estimated that hundreds of people have been left in an emergency situation without ambulances, and that many may have died as a result of that and other communication problems, though there are no centrally compiled figures.
The report quoted the case of a Saja Begum, a women, whose son was bitten by a snake on August 13 in Baramulla; and she could not find any timely medical help. The report mentions her “16-hour odyssey to find an antidote that could save her 22-year-old son”. It said, “While his leg began to swell and he grew faint, she trekked across a landscape of cutoff streets, security checkpoints, disconnected phones and hobbled doctors.”
Instead of the young man getting an antivenin medication within six hours of snake bite as required, Saja Begum did what she could. She cinched a rope around his leg, hoping it would slow the poison. She then ran, with her son leaning against her, to the village public health center, which usually stocks the antidote. The center was closed.
She shouted for help and begged for a ride to Baramulla’s district hospital. But doctors there were unable to help, the family said, because they could not locate any antidote. They then arranged for an ambulance to take the young man to a hospital in Srinagar.
After a long ambulance ride through security checkpoints, he and his family finally made it to Soura Hospital in Srinagar. But Soura Hospital had none of the antivenin, either. They were not even available at the pharmacies. The patient succumbed 16 hours after he was bitten by a snake.
Government officials, however, maintain that hospitals have been functioning normally, even under the restrictions, and that health care workers and emergency patients have been given passes to allow them to travel through checkpoints.
“There was no loss of life caused by restrictions,” said Rohit Kansal, a government official. “We have saved more lives than we have lost.”
Doctors, however, reveal that cancer patients who buy medicine online have been unable to place orders. Without cell service, doctors can’t talk to each other, find specialists or get critical information to help them in life-or-death situations. And because most Kashmiris don’t have landlines in their homes, they can’t call for help.
Doctors at Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, also said there had been a 50 percent dip in the number of surgeries in the past two months because of the restrictions, as well as because of drug shortages.
The New York Times report also mentioned the case of a cardiologist who works at a Srinagar hospital said he had recently received a patient who had suffered a heart attack. The patient needed a procedure that required the help of a specialized technician, but the technician was not at the hospital.
Fearing that the patient could die, and with no way to call the technician, the cardiologist drove five miles in pitch darkness to the technician’s neighborhood and searched for him. The doctor didn’t know exactly where he lived and had to keep asking people to lead him to the technician’s house. The doctor said that he and the technician managed to save the patient’s life.
Several Kashmiri doctors said pediatric care and maternity services were among the hardest hit.
In mid-August, the wire.in had reported the case of a pregnant woman from a village in Kupwara who developed complications. But she and her husband were seven miles from the nearest hospital and couldn’t call an ambulance because of the phone blockages.
The couple walked the seven miles, taking hours because of her worsening condition. They made it to the hospital, but were then sent to a bigger hospital in Srinagar. It was too late, and they lost their baby.
In another latest report in newsclick, it was revealed that several people injured by pellets during street protests or while just passing by have learnt to treat themselves in the absence of health-care facilities and the threat of police registering cases against them if they were to visit the hospitals.
It said that locals are training themselves to handle the complicated procedure to deal with the growing number of pellet injuries at home. Over 300 pellet injuries have been reported in Sringar’s Soura region, a hotspot of protests, in the last one month, locals were quoted as saying.
The report mentions the case of a 65 year old pellet injury victim, whose family said, “They fired at him from a very close distance, causing an enormous amount of damage. His wound was so bad that we couldn’t treat it here, we had to go to the hospital. But we still haven’t got a date to change his dressing and clean up the wound. For us, it’s now a cycle of wait and see if we get treated or not.”
The report said, hundreds of pellet victims are suffering in their homes, cut off from doctors or any other professional aid.
The locals have now created a small emergency room in the shrine of Jenab Sahab, taking on the task of treatment themselves. They use blades, Dettol-soaked cotton pads and even candles to take out several small pellets.
“I have removed pellets lodged in the bodies of my little cousins, my sisters and even on my own back. I am not medically trained to do so, but there is no other option,” said one of the women treating pateints, adding that was not feasible to get to the hospital or afford the treatment. She said her cousin got pellet wounds in his eyes. “We couldn't operate his eyes at our homes but aren't sure if we'd get a date from the hospital for the surgery,” she added.
With several pellet victims caught between life and death, she said she had to pick up the blade. “The process is extremely difficult, as the is pain unbearable and bleeding uncontrollable. We run the risk of losing organs, but I had to pick up the blade myself and do something. The process of taking out the pellet is more painful than the wound itself,” she added.

 

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