While COVID-19 takes the limelight, patients of other terminal diseases struggle

01 April 2020
Patients are seen wearing protective masks amid the COVID-19 scare at AIIMS hospital, on 18 March in New Delhi. As an increasing amount of resources in the health sector are diverted towards dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, patients of other ailments have been forced to take the back seat. Only emergency cases are being treated, leaving out many who are in dire need of care.
Biplov Bhuyan / Hindustan Times / Getty Images
Patients are seen wearing protective masks amid the COVID-19 scare at AIIMS hospital, on 18 March in New Delhi. As an increasing amount of resources in the health sector are diverted towards dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, patients of other ailments have been forced to take the back seat. Only emergency cases are being treated, leaving out many who are in dire need of care.
Biplov Bhuyan / Hindustan Times / Getty Images

Earlier this month, Maitri Lakra, a 40-year-old from Delhi, was diagnosed with tongue cancer. The diagnosis had come after a long ordeal. Maitri is also HIV positive, and had been suffering from mouth ulcers for the last two years. They did not worry her initially because mouth ulcers are a common condition among people with HIV. However, the ulcer refused to heal and started to cause extreme pain, giving her sleepless nights since last May. Maitri and her husband, Najarius Lakra, started going to government hospitals in Delhi to get her relief. After ten long months of multiple tests and treatment, it was only on 9 March that she learnt about her cancer, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.

“She has not eaten in months due to the pain and has survived only on bare minimum liquids. For the last one month, her speech has also gone completely,” said Najarius. Maitri currently weighs only 30 kilograms and constantly feels weak.

At the time of her diagnosis, a doctor from the surgical-oncology department at AIIMS told her that the cancer was in its initial stages. She needed surgery as soon as possible to prevent it from growing into stage-3 or stage-4 cancer, which increase the lethality of the disease greatly. She was told that she was unlikely to get a date for her surgery before mid-July at AIIMS, because of the overload of patients at the hospital. The doctor, instead, referred her to another campus, the National Cancer Institute, AIIMS in Jhajjar in Haryana. Patients at NCI could be operated upon within a week or two, Maitri was told. On 16 March she went to NCI and underwent tests there, and was asked to come back ten days later.

Jyotsna Singh is a health writer based in Delhi. She has been writing on health-related issues for the past eight years.

Keywords: COVID-19 AIIMS cancer coronavirus lockdown
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