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Monday, February 17, 2025

Get vaccinated now says former hospital medical director

by

RADHICA DE SILVA
1172 days ago
20211203

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

 

Hav­ing sur­vived COVID-19, for­mer med­ical di­rec­tor at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon has been treat­ing COVID-19 pa­tients at home, ad­min­is­ter­ing drugs, in­tra­venous flu­ids, oxy­gen ther­a­py and even con­vinc­ing rel­a­tives to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, Cha­toor­goon said this third wave of in­fec­tions fur­ther un­der­scores the im­por­tance of vac­ci­na­tion, as many an­ti-vaxxers seemed un­aware that the im­pli­ca­tions of get­ting COVID with­out a vac­cine were far more dire than the treat­able side ef­fects of get­ting a COVID-19 vac­cine.

Cha­toor­goon called on the Health Min­istry to change its strate­gies and do com­par­a­tive first-hand ac­counts of the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of COVID on some­one who was not vac­ci­nat­ed but sur­vived, ver­sus some­one who ex­pe­ri­enced side ef­fects from a vac­cine.

"Some peo­ple are afraid to get vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause of side ef­fects but I tell peo­ple, when you are un­vac­ci­nat­ed and you get COVID, the virus in its se­vere form does not just kill you, it tor­tures you, it makes you suf­fer! It pun­ish­es you be­fore it kills you. And I tell the pa­tients hon­est­ly that there are side ef­fects to the vac­cine but these side ef­fects in the vast ma­jor­i­ty of in­stances are not near­ly as ter­ri­ble as the se­vere form of the virus," he said.

Since the virus pre­sent­ed, Cha­toor­goon said he has been in­un­dat­ed with calls from peo­ple re­quest­ing help. His num­bers (657-4197 and 773-7838) have been pub­lic ever since he was med­ical di­rec­tor.

The for­mer hos­pi­tal med­ical di­rec­tor said some pa­tients have been self-pre­scrib­ing iver­mectin, a drug which he does not rec­om­mend, as it has not been ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

"I have treat­ed over 500 COVID pa­tients suc­cess­ful­ly at home and I am sure many oth­er doc­tors have done so as well. Home vis­its are very safe. Pa­tients can be suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed if they con­tact their doc­tors ear­ly and if the doc­tors pre­scribe the right med­ica­tion in the right dosage," he said.

He not­ed that the chances of suc­cess are di­min­ished if pa­tients con­tact the doc­tor late in their ill­ness.

Cha­toor­goon said he does not treat peo­ple who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­vere symp­toms but ad­vis­es them to go to the hos­pi­tal.

Out of his 500-plus home pa­tients, Cha­toor­goon re­vealed that on­ly three of them had died.

"These pa­tients al­ready had very low oxy­gen lev­els in the blood when I saw them and there­fore, de­spite all my ef­forts to save them, they died of a heart at­tack af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­vere chest pain," he ex­plained.

Cha­toor­goon says he does not charge for med­ical ad­vice on the phone.

He al­so said peo­ple were afraid of be­ing hos­pi­tal­ized and dy­ing alone in a hos­pi­tal with­out the com­fort of fam­i­ly around them.

Drugs in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem were in short sup­ply and Cha­toor­goon said peo­ple have of­ten ex­pressed fears of dy­ing there alone.

He said hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced COVID-19 first-hand af­ter be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed, he un­der­stood the pain of his pa­tients.

"I am glad I got COVID be­cause it makes me more sym­pa­thet­ic. I would sit with them, hold their hands and com­fort them," he said.

Since 2020, Cha­toor­goon said he has vis­it­ed homes all over the coun­try.

"If I think such a vis­it is war­rant­ed af­ter lis­ten­ing to the pa­tients' sto­ries on the phone, I make avail­able to these pa­tients the nec­es­sary treat­ment which in­cludes med­ica­tion, and in­tra­venous flu­ids and oxy­gen ther­a­py," he re­vealed.

He added: " I ad­vise all of the pa­tients that if the max­i­mum treat­ment I can give at home is not enough, then they will have to call the am­bu­lance to source ad­vanced treat­ment in the hos­pi­tals where there is ven­ti­la­to­ry ap­pa­ra­tus to as­sist their breath­ing."

Cha­toor­goon is a qual­i­fied anaes­thetist and in­ten­sivist and has worked in the ICU for over 40 years.

He al­so said deaths have con­tin­ued to climb be­cause of poor man­age­ment of ICU beds.

"The Min­is­ter of Health and the RHAs need to ad­dress ur­gent­ly the hor­rors and ter­rors, the tri­als and tribu­la­tions that too many pa­tients have faced and con­tin­ue to face at these pub­lic health­care in­sti­tu­tions where all too of­ten the food is un­palat­able, the nurs­ing care leaves much to be de­sired and the doc­tors are not ex­pe­ri­enced enough to han­dle the crit­i­cal­ly ill," he said.

He al­so called on his col­leagues to col­lab­o­rate with their se­niors both in T&T as well as abroad, as COVID was a new virus that they nev­er stud­ied in med­ical school. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that the Min­istry stream­line doc­tors do­ing home vis­its so that all doc­tors would know the best-pre­scribed cock­tail of treat­ment for peo­ple suf­fer­ing from the virus.

Last month, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said he was in­formed that some doc­tors were ad­min­is­ter­ing an­tibi­otics, iver­mectin and oxy­gen to COVID pa­tients.

He said iver­mectin is not ap­proved by the WHO. The US Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s (FDA) web­site states that iver­mectin is ap­proved for hu­man use to treat in­fec­tions caused by some par­a­sitic worms, head lice and cer­tain skin con­di­tions.

Last month, pres­i­dent of the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, Dr Vishi Be­har­ry, called on doc­tors to use the sci­en­tif­ic method in which they were trained. The As­so­ci­a­tion had ex­pressed con­cern that some doc­tors were us­ing iver­mectin and ‘bush med­i­cine’ to treat COVID-19 pa­tients at home, as the sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence does not show such pro­to­cols were ben­e­fi­cial.

COVID-19COVID-19 deathsHealthMinistry of Health


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