Srinagar
In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, with the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases, Remdesivir injection and oxygen supply have become a scarce commodity.
Even a renowned doctor from Kashmir issued an appeal for help to get Remdesivir injection, prescribed for treatment of SARS-CoV2, for his brother admitted with severe symptoms of COVID-19 at Chest Diseases Hospital Srinagar.
A week earlier, a well known politician admitted at Soura hospital was prescribed Toclizumab for his severe condition following his positive test of COVID19. The family of the leader could not find the drug anywhere in Kashmir.
For an orchard farmer from Islamabad, currently admitted at SKIMS Soura, a few visits by his family to the numerous pharmacies outside the hospital for getting medicines that the doctor had prescribed proved futile. His oxygen saturation sometimes drops below 70 percent.
Currently on nasal oxygen, his family, when they asked about his condition, got no answer from the doctor on duty. A day earlier, they had been rebuked for their inability to get the injections.
As Narendra Modi government is blamed for exporting Remdesivir and ventilators amid sharp rise in COVID19 cases, patients in India as well as IIOJK have been left at the mercy of the deadly disease.
In IIOJK where the number of covid cases has seen exponential rise with hospital admissions going up five-fold in less than a month, the drug supply has suddenly become a crisis for hundreds of patients.
Many doctors working in COVID19 designated facilities have raised the issue with the administrations. “On some patients, we have tried many drugs, but without much use.
We have seen Remdesivir and Toclizumab help in a few cases here but we can’t prescribe it now because we are left with a few vials here,” a doctor working in a Srinagar hospital said.—KMS
