“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls, the most massive characters are seared with sears.”
Khalil Gibran
The Covid-19 pandemic is a global humanitarian crisis. It has indeed taken a heavy toll on humans, not only in terms of afflicting their lives and their well-being, but also by affecting their incomes and attitude towards life. It will lead to permanent social, economic,and cultural changes as we foresee.
The economic slowdown has adversely resulted in many mental health issues which have risen in India and across nations due to lossof jobs, loss of social interactions, losses of finance, self confidence, trust in science, research, researchers, government and private institutions. The social media is full of conspiracy theories related to this pandemic which has added fuel to fire. Everyone seems to interpret and misinterpret; spread information and misinformation through various media platforms unfortunately, including derogatory remarks on medical fraternity. As the world wrestles with the unprecedented implications of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, we are facing a human crisis unlike any we have experienced and our social fabric and cohesion is under stress.
Truth lies in the fact that the countries which successfully curbed the spread of the virus were not necessarily those with the best of resources but rather those who did not waste time in implementing aggressive measures to curb the spread of the virus. Mike Ryan, epidemiologist at
WHO, had rightly suggested quite early,”Be fast, have no regrets… If you need to be right before you move, you will never win”.
“This is evolving science. You are seeing sausages being made-in front of the world’s eyes,” said Yale vaccine researcher, Saad Omer in December. This statement clearly indicates the speedy progress of science during the pandemic and the attention research has received lately. Despite the
incredible superpaced feat of going from a viral sequence to an approved vaccine in eleven months the most difficult challenge is and will be of producing enough doses to vaccinate the world’s population, and distributing them in an equitable manner.
India is presently going through a period of economic and political turmoil, unequal access to mental and physical healthcare facilities and few economic opportunities. Considering population as its major strength, India needs to nurture a healthy and productive workforce. We need to acknowledge the relationship between mental health and economic development soon and work towards promoting mental well being.
The recently announced national budget has rightly focused on some of the key elements that would be foundational for charting India’s growth and recovery pathways. In many ways, one of the basic themes of the budget is the emphasis on health; not just on curative but preventive too. A refreshing initiative indeed.
As a lifelong student of medicine, I find that this definitely presents an opportunity to understand the changes in the field of healthcare in general and urology in particular. We need to understand the changes and impact of the covid-19 pandemic endured by urology and its effect on
West Zone USI Newsletter the patient-urologist relationship. The urology community has indeed developed pathways to combat this pandemic and move ahead, beyond the pandemic too. This pandemic has influenced residency training programs and medical graduate education globally, impacted organ
transplantation procedures, surgeries and outpatient care. The development of telemedicine consultation during this time has been highly beneficial to patients, giving them access to care and convenience from the safety of their homes. A win-win situation.
We as urologists faced few challenges like of supply of disposables, after sales services and were deprived of AMC (annual maintenance contracts) on several occasions. The concept of high mortality if patient gets COVID positive was a nightmare and forced us to be on backfoot. As a precaution most of us feared interventions and were conservative. Many young talented urologists who had the burden of loan had a difficult financial situations and were morally affected as uncertainty prevailed with no time boundations. The owners of private setup also had difficult times to meet the overheads and many curtailed the staff or reduced the salaries. On the other hand we fulfilled the commitments for our follow up patients and performed emergency
procedures as per protocols. The staff meetings were conducted to boost their morale. The staff (especially the paramedics) were vaccinated on priority.
May the coming year bring an end to this chaotic pandemic and a fresh beginning of a new normal lifestyle in which we can hope to build a progressively strong health capital, become more kind, more compassionate, more safe, more humane, more inclusive and move towards a secure and sustainable society.
“Clouds come floating into my life no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.”
Rabindranath Tagore