All faiths fight Covid-19 together

KOLKATA/MIDNAPORE: Bharat Sevasram Sangha Hospital in Joka, Al Amin nursing home in Bashirhat and St Joseph Hospital in Midnapore, all run by trusts, have blurred the religious divide as Bengal tries to put in place a network of 68 Covid-hospitals state-wide. These three hospitals are part of 37 private hospitals and nursing homes that have offered their facilities to the state government.
CMOH (Bashirhat) Debabrata Mukherjee said: “We have received cooperation from the Al Amin nursing home authority. It had 30 beds, we are trying to scale it up to 50. The hospital has already started treating patients but there has been no Covid-positive cases till now.” CMOH (South 24-Parganas) Somanth Mukhopadhyay added: “After the state order, we had approached the Bharat Sevasram Sangha hospital authorities. We have received all cooperation. However, we have decided to convert the facility to a Covid-hospital in the last stage if the number of cases outnumber the facilities we already have.”
“We have been told that this will be a Covid hospital for Jhargram. However, because there have been no cases in Jhargram till now, we have been asked to continue with our normal operations. We also treat cancer, TB and have proper diagnostic facility,” said Tapas Francis Biswas, director, St Joseph’s hospital in Midnapore.
According to a state government notification on April 30, 67 hospitals – 37 private and the rest government facilities – have been identified as Covid hospitals. “Several of them have already started functioning full time. Several hospitals have also treated and discharged Covid positive patients,” an officer said, adding, “The help and cooperation extended by the private facilities instils a lot of hope.”
“Every district will have a secondary Covid hospital facility for the primary treatment,” the officer said. “The state has made this clear that this is a temporary measure to fight the pandemic. Specialised Covid treatment facilities will help ensure that the non-Covid healthcare system gets back to normalcy. The Covid hospitals have been earmarked based on their intensive care and ventilator facilities. All these facilities have some amount of beds kept aside for critical Covid patients,” said an officer.