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Coronavirus: In India, overworked medical students are at the front lines of the crisis
- There are 541 medical colleges in India with 36,000 postgraduate medical students – who are the bulwark of India’s Covid-19 response
- For the past year, they’ve endured massive workloads, late pay, rampant exposure to Covid-19 and academic neglect
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Since the beginning of the week, Dr Siddharth Tara, a postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao Hospital, has had a fever and persistent headache.
He took a Covid-19 test, but the results have been delayed as India’s health system implodes.
His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has Covid-19.
In the last 24 hours, India recorded 360,960 new cases for the world’s largest single-day total, taking its tally of infections on Wednesday to nearly 18 million. It was also the deadliest day so far, with 3,293 fatalities carrying the toll to 201,187.
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“I am not able to breathe. In fact, I’m more symptomatic than my patients,” Tara said. “So how can they make me work?”
The challenges facing India today are being compounded by the fragility of its health system and its doctors.
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There are 541 medical colleges in India with 36,000 postgraduate medical students – who are the bulwark of the nation’s Covid-19 response. But for over a year, they have been subjected to mammoth workloads, late pay, rampant exposure to the virus and academic neglect.
“We’re cannon fodder, that’s all,” said Tara.
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