Dissatisfied Covid soldiers

The disquiet among the healthcare workers about inadequate facilities provided to them even as the pandemic rages unabated is a matter of concern. In the latest instance, doctors, nurses and paramedical staff at Hisar in Haryana, quarantined at a university guest house and dharamshala, have been asked to make their own arrangements for as basic an amenity as food. Discontinuing the facility, the administration has claimed that disaster management funds could not be used to fetch food for the quarantined staff and that the hospital staff would have to bear the expenses.

The protest is not in isolation, for similar incidents have been reported from other parts of the country also, where health workers deployed on Covid duty complained of low pay, inadequate accommodation and of being overworked and understaffed. At the PGIMER in Chandigarh, health workers have blamed the hospital administration for not being attentive to their well-being. In Delhi, in fact, the High Court had to step in and ask the state government to pay salaries to resident doctors in some of its hospitals. The Supreme Court had earlier asked the Centre to direct the states to pay the doctors and other health workers their salaries, provide them with proper accommodation and implement the quarantine guidelines uniformly among the medical staffers, without making a distinction between those in high-risk areas and others. The court had also asked that non-compliance be made an offence under the Disaster Management Act, saying there cannot be ‘dissatisfied soldiers in a war.’

Subsequently, the quarantine norms were watered down, with the government stipulating that the 14-day period was now non-mandatory. The onus was put on hospitals for implementing infection control and fixing the final responsibility with healthcare workers for protecting themselves. While it has been slightly easier for the private hospitals, given their high rates, not so for the government hospitals, which routinely lack resources.