India is in a 21-day lockdown to stem the spread of the rampaging coronavirus. Thanks to dilapidated public healthcare infrastructure, India is utterly unprepared for a surge of infections and resulting deaths.
India’s healthcare infrastructure, with over 700 confirmed cases and the threat of a sharp increase in the number of infections, is already under pressure.
Hospitals have put on hold all non-emergency services. People have been asked to visit hospitals only in emergency cases.
Non-COVID patients are a worried lot. They don’t know how long this pandemic stay. They cannot step out of their homes during this crisis?
For such non-COVID patients, Chennai-based doctors have launched Lockdown Clinic. This is an initiative by a group of nearly 28 doctors — ranging from orthopaedists to paediatricians to general surgeons and pathologists. They all are alumni of Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (formerly Sri Ramachandra Medical College & Research Institute).
This is an online medical consultation which will be provided to patients who cannot step out of their homes.
Prakash Ayyadurai, an arthroscopy surgeon from the Centre for Sports Science, who heads it, says: “At the Centre for Sports Science, we planned to give online consultation to our post-operative patients for follow-up and rehabilitation, anticipating a lockdown. We tried this on a few of our patients and to our surprise, the patient compliance was amazing. So, we continue to follow-up with patients online, till date, along with a team of 4-5 doctors, rehab physicians & physiotherapists.”
Patients have to register via a WhatsApp number with their name, age, gender and give a short description of the problem they are facing. They will then be given a video consultation link and routed to a specialist in the concerned department.
Portea Medical, a company that provides in-home medical care in India, on the other hand, made its live video consulting facility for physiotherapy a full-fledged service a couple of weeks back.
Lybrate witnesses 60% jump in online doctor consultations amid corona outbreak
Lybrate, India’s largest health and wellness app, today said it has witnessed over 60% increase in doctor consultation on its platform in the backdrop of lockdown throughout the country on account of coronavirus crisis.
The platform, which allows consultation on its platform via text, audio and video, has particularly experienced a jump in video consultation over the last two weeks when situation pertaining to coronavirus began to turn grim, and with announcement of total lockdown in the country, such consultations increased sharply.
The Union Health Ministry had on March 27 urged people to take advantage of telemedicine services during the ongoing lockdown.
“It is highly appreciable that people are staying indoors and turning to online doctor consultation platforms for their healthcare needs. It is the need of the hour to contain the spread of the virus. The healthcare burden on the country is gigantic around this time and platforms like ours can definitely help share it. People can consult doctors on Lybrate across specialties and so on other platforms, letting hospitals tend to more serious patients,” said Saurabh Arora, Founder & CEO, Lybrate.
On the Lybrate platform, people are consulting doctors about a range of health issues ranging from Cold, Cough, Flu, Fever, Claustrophobia to Joint pain, Back ache, Healthy diet, Headache, Meditation, Yoga and Stress and Immunity, among others.
“Because of the lockdown, the physical activity of people has come almost to a halt while screen time has risen. Owing to that,queries relating to wellness issues have risen significantly,” added Saurabh.
Apart from metros, the platform has also witnessed a noticeable jump in queries from Tier 2 cities.
India will be under a lockdown until April 14, 2020. Coronavirus has so far claimed 27 lives in the country while the number of those infected crossed the mark of 1000 on March 29.
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