Kerala’s health sector faced unprecedented challenges in the past five years, which tested the system’s capacity, responsiveness and resilience, like never before.
The State’s COVID-19 containment is something that the government is immensely proud of and one of the electoral planks on which the Assembly elections are being fought. When one takes stock of the pandemic year that was, there is no doubt that Kerala did alright and much better than many other States.
Pluses
“There was some bungling in the initial stages, when the State seemed to take many irrational steps as far as testing protocols and quarantining were concerned, but a lot of things were done right also. It did contact tracing and isolation to a fault, followed up patients, provided free treatment to everyone, equipped hospitals. The biggest success was that at no point did the cases exceed the health system’s surge capacity,” points out Arun N.M., an infectious diseases physician.
The government also succeeded in getting across to the people the vital message on how COVID prevention was important. In fact, it was almost 100% public compliance with COVID protocols that won half the battle for the Health Department. People were impressed by the meticulous manner in which the back-end team at the department worked.
“I was called on most days by either the Health Department or the urban public health centre. In fact, the mental health care team must have made more calls to me than my family did,” says a city resident who had been admitted to a private hospital for over a fortnight following COVID.
Kerala never allowed the epidemic to run riot. None died waiting in ambulances or because of lack of care as it did in the West.
Minuses
Even when appreciating COVID control, public health experts and academicians are quite unhappy about the high-handed manner in which the government handled many COVID-related decisions, the abysmal data management and how the scientific community never had a role during the pandemic.
Transparency
“The government could have been more transparent and scientific in its approach to the pandemic. The people who were considered experts in public health or epidemiology were never seen and no explanations were given as to the decisions made. The epidemic was always a political issue for both fronts,” points out K. Ramankutty, renowned public health expert.
The government discouraged all clinical research. Beyond generating daily reports, disaggregated data on the pandemic was never shared.
Death reporting
All attempts by clinicians and epidemiologists to enlighten the government on COVID death reporting and making it more scientific was stonewalled because it was unwilling to upset the narrative that the State had the lowest case fatality rate.
“It is alright to be proud of our achievements but unless we explore our weaknesses, we cannot grow in strength. What drove the government all through the pandemic was this irrational urge to boast to the world that we were one step ahead. Not only was it unrealistic, it also prevented us from bettering ourselves,” a senior public health expert says.
