Telangana Doctors Send 20-Point COVID Action Plan To KCR

A total of 40 senior doctors from various hospitals across the state have written a letter to Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao highlighting a 20-point action plan to improve Telangana state’s Covid-19 management policy-making and implementation.
Having a transparent health bulletin, expediting RT-PCR testing and passing an ordinance to take control over all the oxygen plants in the state are some of their key suggestions.

The government should provide good quality masks to people and ensure mask compliance as “this seems to be one of the most effective preventative measures for this pandemic”.
The group of senior doctors also believe that the virus is now airborne, the letter urged the Telangana Chief Minister to ensure stoppage of manufacture, sale, and use of poor-quality masks. Here is the 20-point action plan sent to KCR by the doctors

1. Need for government intervention to make available emergency medications such as Remdesivir etc., fairly and quickly to hospitals to avoid price gouging by various players.
2. Consider using a hospital preparedness checklist and the COVID-19 Surge spreadsheet to estimate and respond to the surge in demand for hospital-based services.
3. Create plans to reduce staffing shortages and assess the need for alternatives.
4. Consider setting up an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for hospitals if not already in place and ensure the EOC has enough staff.
5. Consider involving many of our available home health care, elderly care centres to provide isolation and medical care by telemedicine to mildly affected COVID-19 patients.
6. New infrastructure for increasing the bed availability with help of organizations
7. Expediting RT-PCR/RAT testing centres should avail 24 hours service in the public health sector to cover the needs of the emergency.
8. A proper triage at the entry of government tertiary hospitals for ICU beds not just based on Rt-PCR positivity but the overall picture of sickness.
9. Government should develop and expand ICU beds in Medical college attached hospitals and urgently incorporate them into Covid-19 care facilities.
10. Asymptomatic patients are to be provided with a home kit of paracetamol, antibiotic /antiviral tablets and pulse ox meter and information of when to reach a hospital in case of worsening of symptoms. This will reduce an unnecessary burden on the hospitals.
11. Vaccines are brought from the manufacturers as pre-orders at the earliest to reach the state demands as the new guidelines decentralized the vaccination drive.
12. Adopting the past successful methods of the door to door campaign and vaccination at work and residential areas to overcome vaccination hesitancy. Vaccination program should cover 24 hours to cover the entire population quickly.
13. Converting an entire facility to an Exclusive COVID facility may not be a correct alternative as all health emergencies are life-threatening. There should be a plan to continue the other health needs as before.
14. Developing telemedicine to the best of its expertise & capacity to reach out to the farthest of the people in rural areas to benefit patients who cannot reach the cities for both preventive and cure of the virus infection.
15. Provisions of incentives and adequate rest is to be given to the COVID care doctors, nurses and paramedic teams to ensure commitment and endurance in the public health sector during these difficult times of pandemic fatigue
16. Private hospitals charging beyond the norms should be checked by Peer review and legal committees to have a cap on the price.
17. Society at large watching and filming the struggles of pandemic and politicizing the issues in media or social media should be penalised as a special pandemic precaution to maintain peace and focus on scientific priority at this time of emergency.
18. Dead body disposal protocols should be standardized across to all private and public hospitals.
19. Convalescent serum donation, banking, and information to seek the serum should be centralised with one standard single helpline for the entire public health sector.
20. Finally, gaining the trust of people of Telangana by connecting to them, by displaying the numbers correctly and honestly admitting the problems and challenges incurred through media every day like a `Pandemic update’ will allow seeking a helping hand for all needs that we are unable to fulfil at this critical time.

Also Read:  Tirupati: Sleepy Driver Rams RTC Bus Into Electric Pole, Two Killed