No coronavirus vaccines for India s frightened mums-to-be
4 hours ago A health worker checks the body temperature of a passenger as she arrives with her child at a railway platform in Mumbai on Tuesday. AFP
Tanya Ashnigdh is four months pregnant and frightened, one of the millions of expectant mothers excluded from India s faltering vaccination drive despite being at greater risk from COVID-19.
In a country with one of the world s poorest-funded health care services, giving birth has always been fraught with risks and the devastating recent coronavirus surge has worsened the situation.
Ashnigdh, 31, lives in Muzaffarpur in India s poorest state Bihar. Like other cities, it has been ravaged by the pandemic, and the state s decrepit public hospitals have struggled to deal with the spike in cases.
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updated: May 24 2021, 21:40 ist
By Alia Allana,
The doctors at the Government Institute of Medical Sciences, also known as the G.I.M.S., a public hospital in Noida, a suburb of Delhi, recently told me that during the first wave of Covid-19 last year, most pregnant women had moderate symptoms and were able to return home after being hospitalised for a few days.
The G.I.M.S. serves about 2,000 patients from the suburb and its surrounding villages every day without charge. Throughout March, April and May, the doctors there told me that most pregnant women arrived with acute respiratory distress syndrome, their lungs collapsing. Out of the 15 pregnant women who were in the gynaecology ward of the hospital when I spoke to the doctors two weeks ago, 11 were on oxygen support, two were on ventilators and one was recovering.
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Why is Covid-19 killing so many pregnant women in India?
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Last Updated: May 24, 2021, 11:57 AM IST
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Synopsis
Pregnant women, who have weaker immune systems, have been developing widespread scarring of the lungs after getting infected by the virus. “Their lungs looked white as bone on X-rays,” the doctor said. “Their air sacs filled with fluid that had leaked from blood vessels into the lungs.”
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The doctors at the Government Institute of Medical Sciences, also known as the G.I.M.S., a public hospital in Noida, a suburb of Delhi, recently told me that during the first wave of Covid-19 last year, most pregnant women had moderate symptoms and were able to return home after being hospitalized for a few days.
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Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics, writes that some danger will still exist when things return to “normal.”
A doctor attached a cannula to Ms. Thakur’s nose and administered a continuous flow of oxygen at 50 liters per minute. She struggled to maintain her oxygen saturation rate at 80, way below the normal level of 95.
“Is she going to make it?” a junior doctor asked. The older doctor didn’t reply. Ms. Thakur is still fighting for her life. She is 27.
When Ms. Thakur was admitted, the doctors at the G.I.M.S. were also treating a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy. A ventilator helped them push her oxygen saturation rate up to 80 percent. One evening, after a sonography showed a healthy baby, somersaulting inside her belly, the doctors found themselves debating whether they could operate on her for C-section. Administering anesthesia to operate on the mother would lower her oxygen saturation rate to dangerous levels.
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