COVID-19: ‘Kerala Model’ Treatment Earns Cheers From Returnees

THIRUVNANTHAPURAM:
Even as Kerala’s fight against COVID-19 has been receiving global appreciation, the state seems to be on its way to create a new model in tackling emerging challenges posed by the arrival of Non Resident Keralites and others from within the country and abroad.

Messages galore in the social media expressing happiness after their return to “safe Kerala.” Take, for instance, Deepshikha Nagar. Back in Thiruvananthapuram where she is on a two-week home quarantine, she had moved in from Bengaluru last week when the Karnataka capital was a red-zone city. “Officials from the local panchayat came to our home and explained us the meaning of the quarantine. Yesterday, the counsellor came along with few other members and gave us some Ayurvedic medicines to help build immunity,” notes Deepshikha, originally from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, in a Facebook post.

“Today, we got a call from mental and social department asking us if the quarantine is causing us any stress,” she adds. “All these people have been extremely polite and very supportive. Hats off to the Kerala model!” Equally grateful is Veena Mani, a young teacher who returned to Kerala from Chennai where she teaches in a college. Veena did know the essentiality of the pass she carried as a passenger set to enter Kerala from neighbouring Tamil Nadu, but she had little inkling about the warm and dignified conduct that awaited her from officials at the border.

“The care and precautions our multiple teams take are beyond my words,” says the Assistant Professor in English, specially mentioning the services of staffers with the departments of Health, Forest, Motor Vehicles and Fire besides workers with Kudumbashree and ASHA. “They treated us with dignity. All of them wore gloves and masks (I am not taking this for granted because this is NOT how things are everywhere). Doctors gave us detailed instructions,” Veena points out in a Facebook post.

On reaching home, Veena is equally impressed with the administration’s keenness about her health. “I wholly trust this government’s decisions in managing this crisis,” says her message. The ‘Kerala model’ of health system, which has earned a new round of plaudits from across the globe, involves voluntary workers as well when it comes to the fight against the coronavirus.

Jeril Jose, who recently returned from Oman where he works with a travel consortium, was pleasantly surprised when he learned that some of the masked men aiding him during quarantine were actually not professionals but selfless volunteers. In a video interaction, Jeril talks to his helpers at a hospital in Aluva not far from Kochi’s international airport. And gets bowled over by the response by a volunteer: “We know there’s the risk of us catching the virus. In that case, we’ll also go on quarantine, what else! But till that, none can stop us from working.”

Shilpa Chandran, a non-resident Keralite, is effusive in her praise of the state government for helping her ageing parents currently stuck in Atlanta where they are on an extended visa. Since medicines are expensive in the US, Shilpa’s family wrote to the Kerala government about depleting stock of medicines for her father who had undergone a heart surgery at Kochi in September last year.

The day after the email was sent, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan highlighted the issues faced by NRI parents and seniors and that he was looking into the issue. At the evening press conference, “he also announced that he was going to put in a personal request to the Prime Minister’s Office to ease the rules to send/courier medications outside India!” notes a grateful Shilpa. “In a week, the CMO announced immediate restart of the courier services and fast-track shipment of medicines to NRI seniors!” Without delay, the medicines arrived at Shilpa’s brothers home where the parents were staying.

For those back in Kerala, too, the tenderness quotient in the healthcare is striking. As Siddharth, who is on a month’s quarantine after travelling from Bengaluru to Kerala in the last week of March, recalls, “The Health Department and the police reached out to me once every two days to ensure that I was doing alright physically and emotionally.”

The official guidelines for the returnees to Kerala, while giving health tips and suggesting institutional quarantine if home facilities don’t meet the stipulations, remind the reader with its bottom line: “The government is with you.”