MSF resumes activities in response to India’s COVID-19 second wave.
Friday, April 23, 2021 — Delhi, 23 April - Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders restarts emergency response amid a surging second wave of COVID-19 in Mumbai in Maharashtra state. The city is very densely populated and the poor and dilapidated hygiene conditions are a triple trigger for the virus to breed, infect and spread rapidly. Daily new infections across the country have reached a peak of over 200,000 in a single day, with a whopping 115.736 new cases reported in Maharashtra state on a single day on 16 April.
“The situation is very worrying,” says Dilip Bhaskaran, C-19 Coordinator for MSF in Mumbai. “This is the largest upsurge since the pandemic started. MSF stands ready to further pace up its services in support of the health facilities that are currently completely overwhelmed.”
Our teams are actively identifying cases, conducting screening and appropriate triage for infection prevention and control for TB/DR-TB patients at Shatabdi hospital and the MSF independent clinic. Patients coinfected with COVID-19 and tuberculosis are being referred for inpatient management and treatment to Sewri hospital. Non-TB identified patients with COVID-19 that need admission are referred to Dedicated COVID-19 Health Centre (DCHC) facilities.
MSF is also providing prevention kits, counseling and phone follow-up to high risk patients as well as shielding, digital health promotion, water and sanitation activities. MSF already supports four health centers in the M-East Ward (MEW) of Mumbai and activities will be extended to five more including two units within a Jumbo hospital in Mumbai. It will include two set of tents with about 1000 intensive care unit bed capacity in each. Five additional medical doctors and five nurses have been recruited to strengthen the response.
MSF will continue to provide medical and technical support with oxygen supplies and therapy.