Sumendra Tamang
It was the 30th of October 2020 that I was tested positive for SARS – COV2, popularly known to the world as Corona virus. Early in the morning I got a text from the Government of West Bengal informing me of my contagion and since then unexpected events unfolded in front of me which were demoralising and deadly than the virus itself . This is an account of my experience and my observation in this entire period of global pandemic. Since the very news of my viral contagion social discrimination and the practise of ‘othering’ had already started. In a nutshell, the virus didn’t cause me much complications but the very people around me infused more social tension and mental stress than anything else. I was blamed for catching the virus, leave aside help me or console me for my situation. I have a lot of kids around my neighbourhood so I decided not to stay at home quarantine as is the trend, locally here. I didn’t want to risk it and also I didn’t want to blamed further because I knew the blame game was inevitably going to spiral exponentially.
Two parallel worlds:
Everyday we get news of new cases in thousands but very few is known about the lives of these patients admitted at those COVID hospital, safe homes and quarantine centres . Inside those walls is a different, segregated and an othered world, completely different from the rest of the civilization or the so called civilised world. As already mentioned before, stigmatisation starts from the very advent of this contagion. The infected ones are blamed right from the very beginning even though the fault is not entirely theirs. We never know where and when we catch this virus, right? The virus may be invisible to our eyes but the discrimination is real and socially visible . Many chose not to see this discrimination and remain mum to this sort of social stigmatisation. Silence of the many is equivocally responsible for such social menace happening all around. When the enemy is invisible it becomes real easy to blame anyone, and this time the crisis revolving around us is so acute that this blame game is an open propaganda instigated for political gains via different social platforms like whatsapp , facebook etc . Inside these hospitals all the patients lie in complete isolation from the parallel world outside. The doctors, nurses and other health staffs all wear PPE suits and its impossible to recognise a single face so the primary idea of trust between doctors and patients is completely lost and therefore anonymous. Outside these hospitals us patients are just some numbers in the public domain. One more positive case from Kurseong and an additional number for administrative accountancy. The civilised world on the other hand completely ignores all safety precautions and measures of physical distancing and hold religious, economic, political and social gatherings. Two parallel worlds in complete isolation with one another and the ones violating almost all sorts of safety precautions blaming the ones who are already victims of this global pandemic? Surely madness has grippled over civilisation or may be it is just the advertisement and propaganda of electoral parliamentary politics. However, the ones in parliamentary power and economic dictatorship are surely making bundles of power and capital from this moment of crisis and extreme polarisation.
The pandemic and the crisis in health infrastructure:
I received the news of my COVID contagion on 30th October morning and I was informed by the subdivisional hospital that no ambulance was available late till 7 pm or so. I along with one of my brother who drives my relative’s car were tested positive and therefore we had to manage our own transportation till the nearest safe house near SB Dey Sanatorium, Kurseong. So in this dire situation, neither the hospital staff nor the ambulace driver can be blamed I believe. They are the ones risking it all to fight this pandemic. When the health resources are completely privatised it is fruitless to blame the health staffs working their skin off to fight this pandemic except for some corrupted individuals inside the system. This is not a personal blame and we must realize that the entire system from primary health tier to all higher levels of public health system in Darjeeling and this country is in complete chaos and has been shaken to the very core. The entire scientific fraternity is under a tremendous pressure as the race towards the vaccine continues and even when the vaccine will have been found (most probably and optimistically soon), the politics of market appropriation will create further hindrance to its general distribution. Until now, the infected patients are provided with basic medicines to boost human immunity and the rest is completely dependent upon individual immune system. I have seen the health of the very next person near my bed at Dr. Chaang’s, deteriorate in a matter of few hours. Even the smell of food or the taste of water made them puke their intestines out. Due to the unavailability of beds at Dr.Chaang’s and the daily increment of critical (mostly aged) patients pouring in daily, I along with another patient of my age had to be moved out of the facility. On 4th November 2020 we were suddenly moved to an indoor stadium, in Deshbandu Para which is now turned into a safe home, where I stayed for two days. The health system is completely privatised in India and hence the state of public health system has deteriorated in the last three decades. There are no enough beds, doctors and sanitary health personnel for this dire situation. Fragments of information about infrastructural failure is reaching the public domain but it is just the tip of the iceberg, the situation is critical. On the other hand, most of the private hospitals doesn’t even allow positive patients to enter their private premises. It is like a modern form of untouchability and the very few private hospitals which are taking in COVID patients rip off the medical fees in the most lucrative ways.
A lot of unknown deaths are happening all around our rural society. In my village alone, a lot of sudden deaths are taking place. Everywhere it’s the same as I talk to my friends in other villages. As the public health system has completely deployed its resources to fighting off the pandemic, a lot of people are dying of not being able to attend even the basic health diseases such as stones , diabetes , pancreatic disorders , blood pressure , kidney problems , liver problems, drug overdose and abuse etc and among them old aged population are the most affected ones . A state of fear and paranoia also lingers around the general public regarding the risks of visiting public hospitals as a lot of COVID cases are happening at these government hospitals. . A huge mass paranoia prevails in the rural population about hospitals being the epicentre of COVID infections .This pandemic has infected every strata of population from doctors to political leaders and from industrialists to workers. It has penetrated everywhere and made us realize we are afterall not absolute beings in this planet. To summarise it, this pandemic has exposed the whole capitalist mode of health infrastructure and has reflected the crisis to be extremely acute and visible to the public eye. It has also exposed and made us realize that health for all should be a universal and in reality a fundamental right of every human on this planet irrespective of religion , caste , class , gender , race etc. Privatisation and capital appropriation of health has brought us onto this acute crisis, not only on health sector but the entire economic system as a whole.
C0VID-19, Isolation and mental health:
Aftermath the wave of Corona pandemic and the national lockdown in India, extraordinary tales of unusual ways of quarantine have come up. In one of the forest villages of North Bengal, two migrant workers quarantined themselves in a forest watch tower deep into the forest. An old man after walking back home for more than 1400 kilometres quarantined himself in a boat deep into the mangrove forest of Sundarbans. Extraordinary times. Extraordinary tales.
As I rode to SB Dey Sanatorium Railway Building safe home in my scooty, my mental state was already confused to what should be expected inside the safe home. Inside the safe home, me and my brother were both admitted in the same room. An old man in his mid 50s lay there next to the window. Later at night his oxygen level decreased and I had a slight chest pain because of which we were both shifted to Dr. Chaang’s in Siliguri. We were shifted around 8.30 pm at night in an ambulance. We were both a bit scared as we had heard stories of patients going into depression after their stay at Dr. Chaang’s. One of my uncle had gone into depression and turned suicidal after he returned home from the same hospital a few days back. He had been infected with Corona virus as well and while we were in that ambulance being referred to the hospital in Siliguri the old man kept on reciting all the stories he had heard about Dr. Chaang’s from whatsapp forwards which included organ harvesting and other malpractises. As we reached Dr. Chaang’s his BP increased and so did mine. The general ward was full of serious and complicated patients, some even admitted for months. One of the patients very next to my bed couldn’t eat anything. All he did was puke and he requested me to call his home everyday day. No one ever received the call from the other side. May be they left him to die there. He was shifted to ICU after three days. Looking at him vomit the old man who was shifted along with me there, lost his appetite and his health deteriorated so fast that he had to be put under supplementary oxygen and saline water. Mental and physical health deteriorates so fast inside those isolated treatments.
On 2nd November 2020, I received a message again that my sample had been collected and around 12.39 PM I received another message saying I was positive again. I was shocked and shaken mentally, not because my report was positive but my sample hadn’t been collected at the first place. It was just surreal. Was someone else’s sample swapped for being mine? It left me over thinking and as a result I grew paranoid, I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t lie still. My BP had unexpectedly risen to 149/117. Later, when I made a few calls I was told it was a management’s way of generating my contact number into their registry. My mental stability had already been fractured however. There was a man in his mid 50s who had totally lost his mental stability. He spoke delirious and was hallucinating and made no sense at all. Later I found out that he had been tested positive for about 5 times and he walked around the general hall, talking to himself for the whole day and till late at night and he had been there for about a month . There were many like him. Some would go silent while others would keep on blabbering and complaining to oneself. But almost everyone hatched some kind of conspiracies of different nature. One patient would sleep in the floor while the other would defecate outside the commode, near the tap all the time. The general environment was depressing in general. Whenever we talk about health in general, mental health is never given much attention. It IS never talked about in our society in general. All we care about is physical health and due to this, precisely most of the people fail to relate and understand the post trauma and stress that these COVID patients have to go through.
If we need to win the fight against this pandemic we must all understand the importance of mental health or this world will forever remain broken. Even after I have been tested negative for COVID- 19 now, most of the people around me think they need to keep a distance from me . Most of them treat me like an untouchable. We need a collective approach to dealing with the trauma and stress that us COVID patients have to go through otherwise humanity can never come out of this pandemic. Corona is just a virus, the real pandemic is this system of capital loot and these practises of social discrimination. But only during the darkest of nights, the brightest of stars are visible. My body has won this battle against the virus but for humanity to triumph we must all fight against all such practises of discrimination which aims at blaming and supressing the oppressed of this world.
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