Last week, the district collector called a meeting. The meeting was attended, among other, by local MLAs, MPs, bureaucrats and doctors from the two medical colleges in the district. The second wave had peaked and more patients were seeking hospital admissions than the hospital could provide. ICU beds were at a premium and hospitals were facing unprecedented scarcity of oxygen. Doctors, nurses, paramedics were tired- physically, mentally and emotionally.
Remdesivir has earned the reputation of being the only life saving drug for Covid. Perceived as magic bullet by both the medical professionals and the public, people were paying through their noses to get a vial of Remdesivir. And they couldn’t, fear, panic and guilt would envelope their homes.
” I strongly suggest that every patient with Covid admitted to the hospital must be injected Remdesivir,” a local MLA demanded. I explained that our treatment protocols ought to be driven by science and not petty populism. I told them that Remdesivir had come a cropper in most clinical trials, and if appropriately used, oxygen and dexamethasone, can save the lives of critically ill patients.
The next day, the district collector asked me if I could speak on Remdesivir in Marathi. She felt that this talk would be very useful in alleviating the myths this drug has generated. Amid the shortage of remdesivir across several states, several touts and pharmaceutical vendors were black-marketing the drug six times its official price. Supplies of the drug had run dry in most hospitals. Public was getting paranoid about the shortage of the drug. The collector wanted to share the video with both health professionals as well as public.
So, on Monday, April 19, at five pm, the video team from the district collector’s office arrived in my office. I explained why we should not accord more importance to Remdesivir than it deserves. I also explained how none of the outcomes that are clinically meaningful for a patient- deaths, ICU admissions, necessity of mechanical ventilation and hospital stay- are not favourably influenced by Remdesivir.
Here is a link to the YouTube video of my talk. Please note I spoke in Marathi, the local language.
