They have formed a WhatsApp group of 250 members and giving them free consultations
Zafar Aafaq | Clarion India
NEW DELHI – As the coronavirus continues to ravage rural India a group of doctors are giving free Covid-19 consultations to patients in rural Bihar.
As the cases started to surge in the second wave of the pandemic, three doctor friends, who are pass outs of Aligarh Muslim University, came together and created this group to reach out to their people.
“When cases were increasing, some of the doctors closed their clinics and you know the state of our hospitals, so we thought we should come to the rescue of our people,” said Dr. Amjad who is leading the group.
Dr. Amjad, who completed his studies in medicine from AMU’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College in 2008, is an eye surgeon in Bihar’s Siwan district.
The other members include Dr. Bilal Asif and Dr. Saba Siddique.
Dr. Bilal a robotic surgeon who is currently assistant director at the Medanta Hospital. He frequently organises online video meeting of the group with the senior specialists of the Medanta where they discuss new studies on covid-19.
Dr. Saba Siddique is posted at Raipur AIIMS where he is one of the main consultants of coronavirus. He has published a couple of papers on Covid-19 including contribution to one study disproving the usefulness of plasma therapy.
The trio has put together a WhatsApp group of 250 members. They give advice to the patients over this group. “We have treated a number of patients so far by giving them advice over WhatsApp or on phone calls,” said Dr. Amjad. “We prescribed them medicines and asked them to follow protocol and most of them recovered just by following our advice.”
During consultations with coronavirus cases the group came across patients who were being “wrongly diagnosed and treated”.
When a person contracts coronavirus, it takes six days for the infection to grow in lungs but, Dr. Amjad says, you know these quacks start giving steroids to the patients which decreases the immunity power of the body and promotes virus grow and restricts the ability of the body to fight the disease on its own.”
He alleges that the quacks prescribe medicines to the patients without doing the necessary tests and investigations and without taking into account the cost and benefit of the treatment.
In one instance, he recounts, the patient was being given high dose of medicines by a quack even as he had acute kidney problem. “So after seeing his reports we asked him to get admitted immediately and he was saved.”
“All the quakes have become ‘corona warriors’ and their intervention is hindering in curbing the spread of the virus,” said Dr. Amjad. Corona warrior a term for healthcare workers at the forefront of the fight against the covid-19 pandemic.
The group has treated many cases of patients of black fungus, an infection found among some covid-19 patients across India. Dr Amjad said that the malpractices by the quack doctors has led to many covid-19 patients getting infecting with black fungs.
The group is also raising awareness about vaccination in rural areas of Bihar. People often ask them questions about who can and cannot take a jab and how to deal with post-vaccine symptoms. “We dispel myths about vaccines and clear confusions about cancer patients, about pregnant and lactating mothers, people with heart conditions and so on and so forth,” said Dr. Amjad.
