The Second Wuhan Virus Wave In UK : Who Tackled It And How
Sir I do not know what happened in the USA but I have first hand experience of the second wave in UK, and your perspective is very simple and flawed. It’s very easy to always glorify the mighty and kick the underdog.
The UK NHS triage system is such that even before COVID, patients with minor illnesses were and are filtered over the phone and not allowed to even reach the GP, let alone the hospital A&E. Doctors here are Gods, specialists appointments take months…. not weeks… not days. It’s not like India that at the first sneeze, you ring up your local hospital, family physician, doctor friends….. waste each of their times with umpteen opinions and not heed even one of them in the end…. at the first cough… land the patient with atleast half a dozen relatives to the nearest clinic or hospital… buy medicines, pulse oximeters, oxygen cylinders whatever possible, try bribing and pulling strings every step of the way and beat up the doctor like goons if they don’t like his face !!!!!!
In the UK, you cannot even buy an antibiotic cream over the counter without a doctors prescription which of course you will never get on time – since mostly you will need it for minor indications, by the time you get the appointment, you would have self healed or maybe reached the A&E pathway due to gangrene. It’s true. The protocols here are too rigid and strict and no doctor or rather nobody sways from the set guidelines. Hence when corona came, it took just a few weeks of the first wave to set up guidelines. Remember the British are best in planning and protocols and procedures- they conquered the world in the previous century just out of this ability to plan the present and future by studying the past in detail. However I am not just extolling their virtues.
Beneath this cunning shrewd attitude lies the ugly truth —- the NHS follows 40hrs work week extendable to max 48 hrs for training/ emergency. This is sacrosanct. That’s it. Even when the numbers of COVID were geometrically progressing, the NHS worked in just the same way —- can you believe it—- 40/48 hrs per week per doctor!
And how do you think they achieved that ? What followed was massive employment of a group called “BAME”—-short for Black And Minority Ethnic groups—- that is us blacks Asians etc constituted the majority medical workforce during COVID and battled it out for them. Most of the so called “white” consultants took indefinite periods of leave for sickness, for being contacts of someone high risk( their parents) or for just being a carer to a child—— they basically exploited every clause in the book to stay at home while Asian doctors struggled without masks and PPEs and vaccination and proper treatment and medicines in the frontlines(first wave)——resulting in the obvious…..the maximum number of medico related deaths in the UK occurred in the BAME group. Look it up if you don’t believe me….. the brits of course like always, audited and documented and researched this “phenomenon “of increased BAME deaths with typical British proficiency and filled journals with interesting articles about their “findings” regarding it once they rejoined their duties !
So please don’t undermine India in front of these westerners. It is because of us that they survived the pandemic. We breathed life into their health system. Yes, they have the money, the resources, the political will, but it is the hard working Indians and other Asians and Bangladeshi etc who make up more than 60% of NHS even during non COVID times that keep run the infrastructure with our flesh and blood.
Now coming to India, again let’s not compare a Tiger to a Unicorn. The size of UK and its population is comparable to a small Indian state!
We know how difficult it is to work in our medical set up. Despite everything, the government has risen up to the occasion and collaborated with the Heath authorities as much as possible…. our doctors are doing nothing short of miraculous work on ground with the facilities available and requirement at present. To just critique is the work of a small mind in the time of crisis. If we cannot say anything encouraging, then this is not the time to find faults and play the blame game.
From a Indian origin UK (NHS) Doctor
