(Image source from: hwnews.in)

Kin of 50 Covid-19 patients are refusing to take their familymembers back home from Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad.

The pandemic coronavirus has been spreading like a wild fire all around the world. It first originated in the month of December in 2019 in the city of Wuhan in China. In the six months the virus has infected more than 96 Lakh people around the globe. Around 5 Lakh have been dead.

India recorded it highest one day spike with 17,000 cases taking its total to more than 4,90,000 cases. The deaths in India are a little over 15,000.

Telangana is one of the South Indian states where the cases stand at 10,444 confirmed cases. On Thursday one incident happened at Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad, the capital city of Telangana when families of recovered of Covid-19 patients are refusing to take the patients back home. Family members of many Covid-19 patients at Gandhi Hospital, who have been discharged by authorities, are refusing to take them back home.

Dr Prabhakar Rao, Nodal Officer, Gandhi Hospital, said there are “over 50 patients including men and women who tested positive for COVID-19” and underwent treatment at the hospital over last 10- 15 days. According to the doctor all of them are healthy and have no symptoms. The hospital authorities have discharged them and declared them fit for home quarantine. The families of these patients were called to take them back home but no one came. Many patients of the 50 also waited outside the hospital for hours to wait for their family members but no one showed up.

When the hospital authorities saw that no one from their families came to pick them up, they re-admitted these patients back to the hospital and also provide them with beds to stay.

The senior citizens have been kept in the Gandhi Hospital whereas the other people aged around 50 years or less have been shifted to nature Cure Hospital. The families are  asking the doctors to do the testing again to make sure they are negative, but the doctors said in these critical situations doing tests repeatedly is also not possible

Dr Rao cited the case of a 93-year-old Covid-19 positive woman, who was admitted to Gandhi Hospital 15 days ago and is now fine and fit to get discharged from the hospital. He said her family members are not coming forward to take her to their residence and she is in hospital.In another case, an 85-year-old-person, who tested positive and got admitted to Gandhi Hospital 16 days ago, is now having no symptoms and is fit for home quarantine. But even after doctors are declaring that they are fine family members are demanding re-test. Gandhi Hospital is the designated nodal center in Telangana to treat Covid-19 cases. With all these re-tests it gets very difficult to treat the patients.

In these difficult times when the world is in need of humanity and strangers are helping each other, some families are refusing to take in and help their own family members who they are related with blood.

By Deepika Agarwal