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HomeHealthIn Arrah & Buxar, pharmacists and 'jhola chaaps' are treating Covid because...

In Arrah & Buxar, pharmacists and ‘jhola chaaps’ are treating Covid because doctors ‘refuse to’

Covid-19 patients in Bihar’s Arrah and Buxar districts are left to their fate as hospitals don’t have beds or staff, and private doctors have shut clinics.

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Arrah: Patients are lying on the floor. There are no nurses in sight. Six ventilators bought with the PM CARES fund remain locked in a room on the second floor because no one is trained to use them. X-Ray and CT scan machines lie unused in barred rooms on the first floor.

The situation at the Sadar hospital in Bihar’s Arrah district is so bad that an attendant of a Covid-19 patient, Munna Chaudhary, is ruing his fate. 

“We drove all the way from Aurangabad (over 110 km from Arrah) to Sadar, but the situation here is so grim. All patients here return to their villages because the staff refuses to look after them. I have been monitoring my brother-in-law’s oxygen levels myself,” he said.

An official in the district administration doesn’t sound any more hopeful. He said to ThePrint on the condition of anonymity: “We don’t have human resources. We don’t even have an adequate number of ward boys to clean the hospital. No one wants to wear a PPE kit for hours on end while working. People run away after four days of working in the Covid ward. There is a critical shortage of staff.” 

The word has spread even 50 km away from the Sadar hospital. Satish Sharma, head of Pirhap village in Sahar block, said: “Jo hospital ja raha hai, woh wapis nahin aa raha. Toh logon ne ghar par hi treatment karna shuru kar diya (Whoever is going to the hospital isn’t returning alive, so we prefer treatment at home).” 

In the last 45 days alone, 30 people have died of Covid-19 in his village. “There is no point rushing to towns now,” Sharma said.

A rural district with 12 blocks, Arrah has a population of 2.7 million (27 lakh). The district had 54 active Covid-19 cases on 5 April, but the number had risen to 830 as of 9 May. Yet, the district, on average, tests a mere 2,000 samples a day.

District Magistrate Roshan Kushwaha insisted that patients coming to the Sadar hospital were not being turned away.

“Even if we don’t have a bed, we will provide oxygen. We have patients coming even from Patna and Bihta. We have also roped in six private hospitals. But the numbers are overwhelming for the past 15 days,” he said. 

For the rural belt, we have primary health centres and community health centres, Kushwaha added. “We have prepared kits with Covid medicines. We are testing people at the village level and distributing the kits,” he said.


Also Read: In Bihar’s Bhojpur, quacks are ‘Gods who save lives’ as hospitals battle Covid burden


Pharmacists and ‘jhola chaap doctors’

But in Arrah and Buxar, wherever ThePrint went, it found doctors’ clinics shut down. One of a handful of doctors who was still available, Dr Mukesh Kumar, a general physician at Khaira town in Arrah, said: “I treat 90 per cent of them. They recover with the help of the Covid-19 medicine kit. But the remaining 10 per cent have breathing problems. I don’t take the risk. So, I refer them to the Sadar hospital.” 

Abandoned by the system, Covid-19 patients are either left to the devices of pharmacists or village doctors, popularly known as jhola chhaap doctors.

In Kuber Chakdandhiya, 15 km from Arrah, when Ram Pravesh Yadav exhibited Covid-19 symptoms, such as fever and cough, his son Anil rushed him to the nearest primary health centre at Koelwar, only to return home disappointed. He then tried the local clinics, but no doctor was willing to see his father.

“Doctor logan dekhat naihe. Sab haath khade kar diye hain (The doctors refused to examine my father. They just threw up their hands).” That is how Anil described his experience of looking for a doctor for his father. After he had been turned away by a number of doctors in the town, it was finally a pharmacist who came to his rescue.

The pharmacist gave Anil some medicines, such as Vitamin-C, Zinc and Azithromycin, along with Paracetamol, some of the drugs and supplements prescribed for Covid symptoms. It is this combination that has become the lifeline for people in rural Bihar, as increasingly, villagers lose faith in the healthcare system and avoid going to the district government hospitals.

On 9 May, when ThePrint visited Anil’s home in Arrah district, his father was lying on a cot, still coughing. But Anil was hopeful that he would recover soon.

Anil Yadav's father Ram Pravesh Yadav at their home | Jyoti Yadav | ThePrint
Anil Yadav’s father Ram Pravesh Yadav at their home | Jyoti Yadav | ThePrint

“I am thankful to the medical store owner,” he said. “This is the case with every home in the village. No one is getting access to doctors in towns. They simply refuse to see the patient if we tell them that the symptoms are fever and cough.”


Also Read: ‘Jo hospital jayega woh maara jayega’: Why no one wants to go to Patna’s top govt facilities


‘Mizaaz theek nahi hai’

Kuber Chakdandhiya is a small village of 1,300 people, yet it has had four deaths since 1 April. In Kulharia, which has a population of 12,000, there have been 25 deaths in the same period. Kulharia’s head, Surender Yadav, lives in a joint family. All 15 of them have Covid-19 symptoms.

Village head Surender Yadav sorts through his medicines | Jyoti Yadav | ThePrint
Village head Surender Yadav sorts through his medicines | Jyoti Yadav | ThePrint

From young children to older people, everyone is sick. Only no one wants to call it Covid. One of the village elders sitting outside Surender’s house said, “Mukhiya ji ka mizaaz theek nahin hai (The mukhiya is not feeling well).” This is a disease with no name in rural Bihar. Most of the villagers describe the condition as “mizaaz theek nahin hai”.

What more? Yadav wondered. “We are not an isolated case,” he said. “Every household has patients. Most of them recover, but many succumb to this deadly virus. There is no testing in the village. What is worrying is that the town’s doctors have shut their clinics. Now we have dependent on the jhola chaap doctors.”

Gaon dehat asahay ho jata, agar ye jhola chaap doctor nahin aate (The villagers would have been rendered helpless if these doctors had not come to our aid),” Yadav said. It was his family ‘doctor’ who came to his assistance when the Sadar and private hospitals in Arrah district — the former overflowing with Covid-19 patients, and the latter shut down — didn’t.

Turned away by the official healthcare system of the district, the only lifeline for the citizens of Arrah gasping for life is the helping hand extended by laymen who have a nodding acquaintance with medicine.


Also Read: Surprise, surprise, Bihar’s Buxar has 6 ventilators. No surprise: No one to operate them


 

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