He doesn't even complete his medical training until next year. And yet, at one of the best hospitals in India, he is the one who must decide who will live and who will die when patients come to him gasping for air, their family members begging for mercy
Yahoo News is better in the appThe Wider Image: As COVID ravages India, a 26-year-old doctor decides who lives and who diesThe Wider Image: As COVID ravages India, a 26-year-old doctor decides who lives and who diesThe Wider Image: As COVID ravages India, a 26-year-old doctor decides who lives and who diesThe Wider Image: As COVID ravages India, a 26-year-old doctor decides who lives and who diesThe Wider Image: As COVID ravages India, a 26-year-old doctor decides who lives and who diesThe...
During his marathon shift, which Reuters documented to provide one of the most comprehensive accounts of overwhelmed hospitals during India's harrowing surge, Aggarwal says he fears what will happen if he gets infected too, knowing that his own hospital will be unlikely to find him a bed. In normal circumstances, Holy Family is one of the best hospitals in the country, attracting patients from across the world – and it still is, considering the conditions in government hospitals, where patients lie two to a bed, or die outside on trolleys in the baking sun.The hospital, which normally has capacity for 275 adults, is currently caring for 385. A sign posted outside shows the number of available general and intensive-care COVID beds remains the same as it has for weeks: zero.
Last month, relatives at another hospital in the capital attacked staff with knives after a patient died. The city state's top court has warned that more law-and-order problems at hospitals are likely if shortages continue. "We have been roaming around since 6 a.m. looking for a bed," says Gupta's friend Rajkumar Khandelwal."Where shall we go?" Khandelwal asks the son helplessly, before they leave to try another hospital.
But this wasn't what he expected when he moved to the missionary-founded Holy Family, where depictions of Christ are everywhere: looming over the main staircase, watching over patients in the ICU, in cheap plaster idols wrapped in plastic in the shuttered gift shop.Sumit Ray, the hospital's medical superintendent and head of the ICU, says the hospital staff are doing everything they can. "The doctors and nurses are demoralized," he says.
"It's really a depressing atmosphere," he says of the hospital as he eats from a takeaway carton of biryani. "I just want to have a break of an hour or so outside the hospital so that I can just recollect myself. Because I have to be there for another 24 hours."Aggarwal used to barricade himself in his first-floor apartment, but his mother has other ideas.
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