New Delhi: Sanjiv Kumar Sinha (name not changed!) lost his father a month back from Covid in Sasaram, Bihar. Before he could get over the tragic loss and resume his normal life, his father-in-law succumbed to the deadly virus in Delhi. Hours later, Sanjiv’s mother-in-law was found to be Corona Positive and landed in emergency of Fortis Hospital. While he was trying to get ICU bed for his mother-in-law, he himself contracted the disease.
Sanjiv’s wife has also mild symptoms of Covid, and is required to be quarantined. As of today, not only Sanjiv has not been able to procure ICU bed for his mother-in-law while she continues to be critically ill, he himself is struggling to get oxygen and emergency care. In the most painful state of his life, Sanjiv is currently lying in a hospital bed which has no life-saving facility and only primary care could be given.
One of his wife’s colleagues is running pillar to post in an attempt to arrange the required medical facilities for his co-worker’s mother and husband, but to no avail.
While Twitter resembles a hospital’s emergency room these days with floods of tweets from hapless family members/relatives to seek urgent help for their dying kins, little concrete help comes. Like badi pahunch (access to powerful and mighty) during normal times, a plea for help on Twitter is heard mostly in case of the request being endorsed by a person with large base of followers or the one requesting himself yields some influence.
“Since my request for the colleague went completely unheard, out of curiosity I checked the timeline of a politician who has been praised widely for extending help to Covid patients. During this I observed that he had responded requests of political people, those holding senior positions in government and journalists. This disappointed me a bit but then I told myself that world has always been like this,” said the person trying to help Sinha and his family.
Undeterred by the setback, the person quoted above has called over a dozen people in his phonebook to seek help. In one case, a gentleman assured of doing something about admitting Mr Sinha in one of the hospitals in Noida but asked for his medical reports. But the problem does not end there. The hospital where Sanjiv is admitted there is no one who could take a snap of the medical reports and Whatsapp them to the Noida man.
“Neither doctor nor ward boy can send the pictures as they are busy with their work,” said Sanjiv’s well-wisher who continues to reach people for a bed in ICU.
In these trying circumstances, it is easy to blame people for not rising to the occasion, but the truth is that in the sea of ever-growing Covid-cases, it is difficult to pick a few and leave others, or one who needs help more than the other.
Reality is that it is the common man who’s standing up for common man while those who matter worry about their standing and reputation.
(To extend help to Sanjiv Kumar Sinha, you can get in touch with Ms Reena Pasad at 9868387875)