Maldives follows the WHO guidelines in crisis management by facilitating the medical facilities and manpower in the country to the COVID-19 task force. These include doctors, nurses, technicians, radiologists, and even administrators. What about the patients that require ordinally urgent care?
Even in the midst of a pandemic, people will still have heart attacks and strokes. Babies will still be born.
The pandemic has caused a previously unimaginable shift in the demand for hospital services.
Hospitals are usually full of patients for a bed to become available on the general wards or even in the intensive care unit.
During the time of writing, several flu clinics are already open in different parts of the capital city Male’ to keep suspected COVID-19 individuals separate from patients with other complaints. However, there are still some hospitals that carry out these operations simultaneously.
Hospitals have undergone many different operational changes, many of which vary from hospital to hospital.
The main government hospital, IGMH had halted visitation hours in order to curb the spread of COVID-19 during the initial phase and continues to take preventive measures with the development of the disease.
Hospitals around the country are closing some services to make sure that people who have medical emergencies can still get help. In many hospitals, any surgery that can be reasonably waited is postponed. Some tests are unavailable due to nationwide restrictions.
For patients, some services they relied on are no longer available or have been canceled. For many COVID-19 has instilled fear of face-to-face medical care. People with urgent health problems may be opting to remain at home. For patients managing long-term health issues, the pandemic is upending their routine doctor’s visits, lab tests, and treatments.
However, in an outbreak like this, all medical practitioners have a vital role to play and are working relentlessly. Hospitals are running normal functions with overworked staffs.
Online clinics and consultation services have increased in the past few weeks to practice social distancing and provide medical assistance at the same time. Some clinics have even expanded their services to home visits. Ease in renewing prescriptions and delivery of medicines are being implemented.
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