BHUBANESWAR: After a few days of mild fever, Rashmi Sahu (32) suddenly felt breathless a night last month, her husband Prabhat called up Susanta Singh, their local MLA and state’s rural development minister for help.
Less than half an hour later, Singh reached their doorstep at Jhair village in Sohela block with an oxygen cylinder.
The woman was later shifted to VSS Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, 80km away from the village, the next day.
Rashmita tested positive for covid.
After many days in ICU, she was discharged recently.
“My oxygen level had started dropping.
I don’t know what would have happened if not given oxygen support then,” recalls Rashmi, mother of a 12-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.
At a time when most vehicles would avoid shifting patients to hospitals fearing Covid, three-time Bhatli MLA, Singh drove an ambulance himself ferrying many patients in odd hours and delivering oxygen support at home.
“Arranging a vehicle is very difficult for a patient in most of the villages when they want to go for test or for hospitalization.
At times I had to drive, so that the drivers are not scared,” he says.
“In the second wave, oxygen saturation emerged as a big problem.
I tried to pitch in for the transit time before people would move to hospitals,” says the minister.
Since the government’s ambulances were not enough to ferry patients when Bargarh district witnessed a spurt in Covid in May, Singh mobilized private funds and bought seven vehicles and placed them strategically in Sohela, Bhatli, Ambabhona, Barpali and Bijepur blocks.
He also arranged around 30 oxygen cylinders.
A group of volunteers were created to reach out to patients.
“Though the government system was also working, we tried to compliment the efforts.
Whenever someone tested positive, our volunteers reached out to them over phone and assured support.
The patients would call back whenever they need.
We have attended more than 20 serious patients in a day, helping them with oxygen and shifting them to hospitals,” Singh says.
“There were nights I did not sleep.
The calls have started dropping as the overall situation has started improving with very few new infections,” he says.
Apart from attending critical patients, funeral of both Covid and non-Covid bodies had become stigmatic, Singh also cremated bodies one at Sanimal village in Sohela block and another Jampali village under Bhatli block in May.
Is he not scared himself? “I didn’t think about that.
When someone helpless calls you to save him or one of his kin, you have no time to think anything else.
By God’s grace I did not test positive in the second wave.
I had tested positive and had recovered in the first wave, in August last year,” says the 48-year-old bachelor.