As many as 50 doctors, affiliated to the Indian Medical Association (IMA), succumbed to corona virus on a single day on May 16 across India. In the first wave of corona virus, 736 doctors had died. But in the second wave since the first week of April this year 244 more have died.
Here it needs to be mentioned that there are in all 12 lakh allopathic doctors. Out of this only 3.5 lakh are members of the IMA. By that logic, around 200 doctors might have lost their lives to the pandemic on a single day on Sunday.
The official toll of 50 IMA members is the highest in a day since COVID-19 reached India on January 30 last year. The latest to become a victim of COVID-19 is a former President of the IMA, K K Aggarwal (62) who breathed his last on May 17. A noted cardiologist of Patna, Prabhat Kumar also died on Tuesday.
The tragedy is that three per cent of these doctors had got both the doses of vaccine while many others got one jab.
As doctors are front-line warriors, they are losing lives though they are wearing PPE Kits and using sanitizers. Some doctors who couldn’t take the vaccine said that either they didn’t get time to take the jab or had fallen ill in the recent past. A few young doctors complained that in some cases they have to perform their duty for 48 hours at a stretch, thus they have no time to get vaccinated.
In many states the shortage of doctors has prompted the authorities to even deploy the final year medical students for duty. According to reports, in some cases even second-and-third year students are getting field training on how to fight the pandemic.
Bihar has suddenly emerged as the leading state where doctors have lost their lives. In the second wave 70 doctors associated with IMA have died since April. In the first wave only 41 members of IMA had died in one year.
Meanwhile, the number of positive cases of corona virus declined further. On May 17, more than 2.63 lakh cases were reported but the death toll was 4,329, which is the highest ever in the world.
