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Mumbai: With municipal elections scheduled for a few months, the meeting and the Lok Sabha elections next year, Maharashtra has entered a politically charged period and its major players are stepping forward.
While Prime Minister Eknath Shinde soiled his shoes on Thursday when he went to the Mithi River in BKC to oversee pre-monsoon sanding work, claiming to be “a box user and a user of the people”, on Wednesday, Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray former members of the Covid-19 task force invited them to a dinner to express his appreciation for their work.
While the explanation for the invitation was not revealed, doctors said they were moved and surprised that the former lead minister applauded them for guiding his government in fighting the pandemic in the state.
Three years into the pandemic, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 no longer an emergency on May 5, marking its symbolic end.
Speaking about the dinner, a member of the task force said: “They didn’t tell us the reason for the invitation. They called us in the evening and asked us to go to the Taj Lands End. They touched us and beat us” the way he personally thanked us and said that the management of the pandemic would not have been imaginable without our contribution. It was also the first time we all met casually.
“During the days of the pandemic, the meetings were intense as we talked about covid-19 numbers, mortalities, searching in covid-19 scenarios around the world, learnings and moves we could recommend; Last night’s verbal exchange in a lighter tone,” said a member of the former working group.
During the three-hour meeting, Thackeray thanked the doctors and the visitors discussed vaccinations and how many times they contracted the virus.
Dr. Suhas Prabhu, former chair of the Covid-19 Paediatric Task Force, said, “Last year, we were congratulated on a state government function, when he was CM. Now he is no longer the CM and yet he called us and thanked us personally. “. It touched me.
Dr. Prabhu recalled how Thackeray called it at the height of the pandemic in May 2021, when the hypothesis abounded that the third wave would have children.
“I was surprised to get a call from him on my phone. There was a working group of adults in position and they told him why he needed another one. He said it was vital to have a paediatric task force to prepare, given the prediction of a Third Wave that would be children,” he said.
Dr. Prabhu recalled how Thackeray encouraged the creation of pediatric beds and the acquisition of nurseries, “without worrying about the money needed to spend. “
“He had said, ‘I don’t need to see a single mother in my state struggle to get covid-19 treatment/medical assistance for her child. ‘This was not the attitude of a politician, but that of a human being,” he said.
Maharashtra was the first to form a task force when the state’s Covid-19 death rate doubled that of the rest of the country. The running organization composed of medical specialists proposes measures to minimize the mortality rate for the clinical control of Covid-19 patients.
Members of the state’s paediatric Covid-19 task force resigned four days after Shinde’s government came to power. They established guidelines, recommendations and education modules to treat Covid-19 in the pediatric population and identify post-Covid-19 headaches, such as multisystem pain. inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a condition in which the lungs, kidneys, and heart can become inflamed, which can become a life-threatening condition.
He also played a key role in drawing up rules for the reopening of schools after a two-year hiatus. At their last meeting, the team insisted on vaccination against covid-19 in schools.
While the pediatric runner organization resigned, the Covid-19 runner organization continued its meetings.
“We held our meetings and sent the minutes of the meetings, but we never got any feedback or reaction from the new government,” said a member of the Covid-19 task force, a former adult, who participated in Wednesday’s meeting.
“We are grateful that he has followed many of our advice. We felt we did a smart job,” the doctor added.
With the recent cases of Covid-19, the Covid-19 adult task force formed by Thackeray has been replaced by a new group of runners, which is now led by Dr. Subhash Salunkhe.
The dinner assembly also included Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala, a well-known bariatric surgeon, who volunteered to identify the NSCI-Worli Jumbo Center with Covid-19 cases on the rise in Worli, which is the constituency of Aaditya Thackeray. He then became Thackerays’ number one doctor when the circle of relatives was inflamed with the virus in 2021.
“When I volunteered for my service in the pandemic, I didn’t even know him. We have done a lot of work in combination with the pandemic. We work on the concept of giant centers, ready-to-use idea in contactless treatment, digitalization of healthcare and the creation of extensive care packages in railway containers. We have oxygen concentrators long before the rest of India thinks about it. Maharashtra has brought the pandemic under control more in other parts of the country thanks to those measures,” said Dr. Lakdawala.