Private hospitals shut doors for visitors

Falling in line with the directions issued by the Health Ministry, private hospitals in Thanjavur and Tiruvarur districts have put in place stringent measures in their premises to check the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of this initiative, visitors are disallowed to call on in-patients and barred from entering the hospital premises. Only one attendee per patient was allowed to stay at the hospital. In order to make this initiative purposeful, in most of the private hospitals the inter-changing of caretakers at regular intervals was also not entertained except for critical cases where change over of caretakers could not be avoided.

Interestingly, the move seems to have elicited a good response from the relatives and friends of patients said a security personnel of a private hospital at Thanjavur. “Some people who initially insisted that they be allowed to call on their dear ones convalescing at the hospital, later got convinced and returned,” he said.

“As far as out-patient services, such requests were entertained from people only if necessary,” according to S. Marimuthu, president, Indian Medical Association, Thanjavur Branch.

The patients were allowed to meet the doctors only if they comply with the COVID-19 virus spreading prevention exercises. If such patients were found suffering from high body temperature they were referred to the Thanjavur Medical College hospital immediately, Dr. Marimuthu said.

In Tiruvarur district, the persons seeking medical advice from the doctors were told to interact with the medical practitioners through video conferencing and if needed they were given an appointment alone to meet the doctor, said president, IMA, Tiruvarur Branch, B. Lakshmanasamy.

At the hospitals, apart from imposing the rule of one caretaker for one in-patient strictly, staff were posted on duty on alternate days and all those entering the premises were asked to wash their hands with sanitiser.

In both the districts, private hospitals have postponed elective surgeries, Dr. Lakshmanasamy said.

Efforts were also being initiated to comply with the government’s direction to keep 25% of beds for use in case of any exigency that might arise due to COVID-19 pandemic. At some hospitals, some of the non-medical employees such as ward boys, cleaners etc. have failed to turn up for duty from March 25 presumably due to fear of contracting COVID-19 virus, they said.

Source: Read Full Article