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Coronavirus has exposed how unprepared India is to meet emergency situations. It requires money to fund modern laboratories but India is not fund-starved. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a ten million dollar fund for SARC to meet the challenge from the coronavirus. The government of India needs a long term plan to step up medial research and treatment centres. India has eight doctors per 10,000 people compared to 41 in Italy and 71 in Korea. It has one state-run hospital for more than 55,000 people. (Private hospitals are out of reach for most people). The country has a poor culture of testing, and most people with flu symptoms do not go to doctors and instead try home remedies or go to pharmacies. There’s a scarcity of isolation beds, trained nursing staff and medics, and ventilators and intensive care beds. India’s traditional neglect of public healthcare will begin to bite if the disease spreads to its teeming small towns and villages. The coronavirus pandemic is a lesson that the central and state governments ignore research into infectious diseases at their own peril. Avian flu, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), Ebola, Zika, Nipah, etc, are a clear example of the warning signals they have sent. Moreover, with bacterial infections becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, common infections can potentially become life-threatening in the future. States have been mishandling the healthcare by focussing mainly on populist schemes for electoral gains and making headlines. Effective governance of pandemics involves preparedness, response and recovery and India has to gear up on these counts. There is need for a comprehensive policy for improvement of health care and research facilities across India and this requires doing away with powerful lobbies that have been having their way to the peril of the poor and needy people. Many states are getting little for improvement of health care facilities especially the small states in the north east. The arrival of coronavirus has exposed the pathetic condition of health care systems across most north eastern states. In a post-Covid-19 world, there needs to be a course-correction. While it is virtually impossible to predict what the next pathogen threat will be, from where it will emerge and when it will strike, pandemic-focused research could give authorities a future head start in the battle against infectious diseases. The virus may be under reported because of under testing facilities. According to official sources, there is no confirmed case till March 21, 2020 when a total of 4644 were screened in the airport and 21,948 passengers travelling in trains or on roads. According to the source, screening points are at 14 entry points at rail and road. However, what is quite disappointing is that Nagaland has no viral testing laboratory. Ultimately, blood samples of those suspected to be infected from the virus have to be sent either to Guwahati or, Dibrugarh for tests. The state has set up District Task Force in all 11 districts and how prepared they are, remains to be seen.The Task Force is a temporary measure that is co-terminus with the exigency. Therefore, there may be a need to include the area of operations of the Task Force into the District Disaster Management Authority. Viral testing laboratories would be required in Dimapur, Kohima and in district having entry points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tackling viruses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}