Covid 19 : "The protection lies in our own hands"
By Vijaya Pushkarna
A: I worked in the PGI for 42 years, and almost every
year there used to be an eye flu epidemic. Practically every resident doctor
and the faculty members got this conjunctivitis. Except me! What I was doing
was perhaps the right thing.
A: It does not take too much of time. This exercise would
take just two minutes. I would do it myself. I would never leave that to
anyone, because I wanted to do this to my satisfaction. So that every place I had
touched while examining the patient, or the patient would have touched in the
clinic is sanitized properly. It is about patient care and self care.
A: I am sure of the eye flu virus, but I am certain we can learn our lessons from that
.It comes every year and it comes in a
big way. It is not
like it is without consequences, including very serious neurological ones that
could lead to paraplegia. People become handicapped because of the
complications of these viral infections Since it doesn’t kill people, it doesn’t
draw the attention it should have drawn.
A: Nowadays buses ..trains..cabs .. are all being sanitized
… But the question is why don’t we do it as a routine? We have so much of
tuberculosis, every day almost a thousand people dying of TB… We have three
deaths on account of corona virus, but thousands dying of TB, which is
spreading by community contact where everyone is breathing into everybody,
every surface is contaminated, people are spitting
A: TB also spreads by an aerosol. It goes and sits. It’s a
droplet. These are very very microscopic particles which trap the bug, the
commonest eg of that is the TB bug, you cough it out .And people in shared
spaces are likely to catch it.
A: Self quarantine or self isolation is self
discipline. The only way you can kill
this epidemic is by isolating people who are infected, because the virus will
die its own death, because the natural defenses of the body will take care.
A: Anybody can go to the shop wearing a mask, to buy food or
whatever, that is fair enough, because
he doesn’t spread the virus and he doesn’t catch it. Going out should be on a
need to basis, it doesn’t mean shutting down the city, closing shops. Its not a
curfew, but self imposed restriction .So avoid cinema halls, malls , schools
which have in any case been shut down. Lead a normal life at home.
A: Balram
Bhargav the Director General of the
Indian Council of Medical Research is being very logical when he says that if
we can maintain this for one month, we will not go into the community stage of
infection. I hope the government follows this up.
When the enemy is as deadly as the novel corona
virus, declared pandemic by the World Health Organisation, how and
why does our protection lie in our own
hands?
Prof Amod Gupta, former Director of the Advanced Eye Care
Centre ,Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research
(PGIMER), Chandigarh, has for decades prescribed “wash your hands regularly,
don’t touch your face” to thousands of his patients.
In an exclusive interview, Prof Gupta , honoured as "the teacher of teachers"in ophthalmology, explains how this
simple act of washing your hands often and not touching your face, can help
prevent the spread of this infection, as well as make us a healthier nation.
Q: What is the reason behind your advise to patients to
“wash your hands…”.
After I saw a patient who would walked into my clinic, I would wash my hands. Patients also handle
paper, admit cards etc. I would have to write on that paper, so I would use my
pen. So I would wash my pen. I would take spirit and sanitise my slit lamp, and
the microscope I used. I would sanitise
the door knobs, the surface of the table and also the arms of the chairs. This
was an exercise I would do after each
patient that I saw, so that the next patient coming in would not get the eye
flu.
And equally important, I would never touch my eyes.
Q: How long would it take you to sanitise the place? Did you
do it yourself?
Q: What is the rationale behind these two actions?
A: One thing about
all these viral infections is that they don’t fly into your system, they don’t
enter your system through air. They stick on surfaces and some of these viruses
are hardier than the others, and they will stay longer. For the eye flu it
could stay on a dry surface for almost a month, they had figured some years
ago. Simply put it could last very very long. Not a few hours. So anybody who
is touching a surface is certainly
carrying it in his fingers, on his hands. And everyone uses a door handle, a
knob, the lift buttons, the switches and stuff like that, so everyone in the
family would get it.
Q: Would the patients see the importance of it?
A: I used to tell my
patients that if you don’t want your family members to get it, tell them
not to touch their face with their hands unless they have washed their hands
thoroughly. Washing their hands thoroughly and not touching their face would
prevent the family members from getting the eyeflu ,and that way anyone getting
the infection would not be able to pass it on to others.
The patient touches everything, he uses the same towel to
wipe his face, so we presume that
everything is infected . The only precaution in the true sense is that you
don’t touch your face with your hands. If you don’t bring the virus to your
face, then it cannot get into your system. It is as simple as that. And many
patients understood that.
Q: Is that true of
any virus?
Q: Please elaborate on how the act of not touching your face
works…
A: The only way you can save people is by telling them not
to touch their face, and it is a simple precaution—don’t touch your eyes, don’t
touch you mouth, don’t touch your nose.
You cannot bring the virus just like that unless somebody is sneezing right
into your face. Normally people would not cough into your face, they would
certainly be more than three feet away, what is defined as social distancing.
People wont come that close unless they are family members or very close
buddies, so we do already maintain that distance.
But more serious is the possibility of unwashed hands coming
into contact with your face, because everything is infected. The eyes, nose and
the mouth are the three ports of entry. You don’t want to take the virus you
have picked up into your system, so you don’t touch them.
Q: Are we doing enough to sanitize the public space?
Q: Is there a similarity between TB and Covid 19?
So it is important to sanitize..people spit, people wipe they hands on the handle on the back of
the seats, there is sputum everywhere in
share spaces like buses, public transport. People leave the bugs
everywhere..the next guys shares that space, and that is how TB spreads..
Q: Can the current messaging help target
other health concerns as well?
A: If they take up all these sanitation methods consistently
on a war footing our dream of eliminating TB by 2025 will be achieved. In fact
if they teach people to wash their hands, basic hygiene, civic sense, many
things can be achieved in one go .
Saying Namaste is fine, it looks glamorous, we are teaching
the world that. But let us teach our people also not to spit, to wash their
hands, not to touch their face. We don’t work hard on that, now is the moment.
All the infections that we have , the typhoid, all the food coli form
infections diarrhea, dysenteries all come from contaminated hands—cooks don’t wash their hands, waiters don’t
wash their hands etc The government is
advertising, conveying the message. I would say if everyone did all this all
the time, many health issues will be taken care of.
Q: Health authorities are recommending home quarantine,
self-isolation? And malls and cinema halls etc are being closed for a few days
in many states.
We are all the time threatened or challenged by bugs, we
survive because of our robust immune system. The young people, children who have a robust immune system don’t even
show symptoms. Their body will eliminate the infection in a couple of weeks, so
if we isolate them they will not spread it to the next person.
Q: What are the dos and don’ts around self-isolation?
Q: How long will this continue?
Community stage is where you go into a crowd and don’t know
who’s spreading the virus and who’s catching it.In India we are still at the stage where the infection is
occurring only in those who are in very close contacts – family members of care
takers -- of those who have a history of
travel, to China or somewhere.
So we are not getting the virus by going to the bazar
or a shop. We have to manage the next
one month.
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