Imkong Walling
Courage and faith in the face of adversity is truly inspiring. History of warfare is replete with stories of cornered armies fighting off bigger adversaries marshalling around a spirited general or a king commanding the faith of soldiers. To draw a parallel, the world today is cornered by an invisible virus, a force so elusive and contagious that clearly appears to be as destructive, if not greater, as the World Wars.
In the face of the Corona threat, would posing a confident front work like it did for the generals of old?
This question is especially for an apparently confident Nagaland state government vis-à-vis preventive measures it has taken to ward off a possible influx of the pathogen into the local population.
There is no denying the steps it has taken from screening of people traveling by air, isolation wards, rapid response teams, gearing up awareness, dispelling rumours, allaying fear and so on.
Reassuring at first, but the reassurance turns to disquiet if one is to dig a bit deeper, remove the ‘preventive coat’ and uncover the medical infrastructure that lies underneath.
The medical support infrastructure that the government appears to be banking on is certainly not reassuring. What lies underneath contradicts what is displayed up front.
From Primary Health Centres to the District Hospitals, the governmental neglect across the state is for all to see.
The government District Hospital in Dimapur does not have a proper hospital building, which brings to question the Health department’s claim of setting up an isolation ward at the District Hospital.
What was not told was that the isolation ward came at the cost of a ‘Child Ward’ that had to be relocated to a different block in a hospital already stretched to the limit for a lack of room.
Last heard, the equipment at the isolation ward was at best basic with no life support (ventilators) in place if cases turned for the worse.
If this is the situation in Dimapur, supposed to be the most ‘advanced’ district by Nagaland standard, one can only imagine the kind of equipment in place in the other government hospitals.
Except the Naga Hospital, Kohima, the underlying situation was summed by one medical personnel, this way, “Even for common patients we don’t have a roof, let alone ventilators for COVID-19 patients.” Like that was not enough, the state does not have the requisite bio safety laboratory to test suspect cases.
When even the likes of the USA, Western Europe and South Korea with their medical advances are struggling, Nagaland, with its chaotic medical infrastructure is clearly a cause for concern.
It would be way too much of a demand to build isolation hospitals in two weeks like the Chinese. However, the emergent COVID-19 threat should serve as a lasting lesson for the Nagaland state government to seriously pull up its socks to overhaul its health infrastructure.
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
