NEW DELHI : In a shocking state of affairs, nurses – the frontline health professionals in Covid care – at Delhi’s Lok Nayak Jayprakash Narayan hospital (LNJN) are crammed into a single room, as many as 60 of them. Added to this, there is just one toilet for the whole lot. Interestingly, the hospital’s doctors are lodged in 5-star hotel, Lalith.
The hospital is dedicated to Covid care and state orders demand that separate rooms with attached toilets must be arranged for nurses involved in Covid care. However LNG provides a few small rooms and a hall with single toilet for their entire nursing staff on Covid duty. In the small rooms above the Coronavirus ward, four to five nurses huddle in each of them. Another 60 occupy the hall attached to the hospital’s new Dental block.
LNJN has a total nurse strength of 1500. Of these, 120 were picked to form the Covid exclusive care batch. They work shifts for 2 weeks straight followed by a 2-week break during which, they remain under observation at the hospital. Samples are collected from them to test for presence of virus and they are let off home if the result proves negative. The step is an effort to prevent community spread.
However in reality, these controls are full of holes says a Malayalai male nurse, KR Senthil. “Everybody sleeps huddled in the hall. There is no bath facility. One has to collect water at the wash basin and fetch it to the toilet for a bath. After a 2-week duty there is no facility for isolated quarantine and several leave for home on their own unsure if this will amount to technical violation.”
Senthil , a Perumeda native from Kottayam, is father of a 9-month-old baby. His wife and two children are lodged at home as he left for the Covid care duty. There are roughly 30 Malayali nurses on Covid duty, he said. We don’t need five-star facility, all we ask for is humanitarian intervention, he added.
