A strongly worded statement from the Indian Medical Association (IMA), pointing out the lacunae in the State’s preparedness to face the crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and accusing the government of leaving pandemic management to bureaucrats rather than health experts seems to have got the goat of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who has in turn accused that those criticising the government have a warped mindset.
IMA had issued the statement in the background of the agitation of doctors on Monday, accusing the government of demoralising healthcare workers and pointing out the issues in COVID-19 management.
The attack on the Health Department’s COVID-19 management was not taken kindly by Mr. Vijayan, who, while inaugurating the new family health centres, accused IMA of becoming “self-styled health experts” and “trying to mislead the public about the Health Department”.
He claimed that the Health Department had been managing COVID-19 fully on the basis of scientific advice and with necessary caution and said that those accusing the Health Department of mismanagement had vested interests in mind.
When contacted, IMA leaders maintained that they had only done some plain speak and that they had chosen not to mince words because the crisis involving COVID-19 was real and with the number of serious patients going up, the State needed to do much more than what was being done now on the critical care front.
“All available ICU facilities in the State are nearly 80 % full now. In the next two weeks, we fear that the situation will go out of hand. The government needs to focus better on critical care capacity building and ensuring more human resources,” IMA State secretary P. Gopikumar said.
The Chief Minister, during his evening briefing, also said that the State government was consulting the IMA on many things and their suggestions were being taken. However, IMA did not seem to be enjoying the same stature with the Union Health Ministry or with other State governments, he said.
