Saturday, May 28, 2022

Telangana gets a raw deal in Remdesivir allocation

By Telangana Today

Published: Updated On - 12:50 AM, Sat - 1 May 21

People at an Urban Primary Health Centre in Musheerabad on Friday. — Photo: Surya Sridhar Compared to Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Telangana got just 41,800 doses while active cases are at 80,000

Hyderabad: Telangana continued to get a raw deal in the allocation of vital medical resources needed to treat Covid positive patients.

The Centre on Friday enhanced the allocation of Remdesivir to several States and compared to Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Telangana did not receive its fair share of the antiviral drug.

The Centre allocated 41,800 Remdesivir doses to Telangana on Friday, which would hardly last a week, senior public health officials said. The discrimination towards Telangana over distribution of Remdesivir drug became obvious, as the Centre chose to nominally increase the doses from 21,500 to 41,800, an increase of just 20,000 doses for a period of ten days.

Gujarat with an active case load of 1,37,794 Covid cases received a whopping 1,82,500 doses of Remdesivir. Similarly, New Delhi with 98,000 active cases received about 81,300 Remdesivir injections while Tamil Nadu with 1,12,556 active infections was allotted 67,500 Remdesivir injections. In sharp contrast, Telangana with an active case load of nearly 80,000 Covid patients was allocated just 41,800 doses of Remdesivir.

While the Centre has full control over the supply of Remdesivir, oxygen and vaccinations, in the past few weeks, it has been consistently failing to ensure a fair and steady distribution of vital resources needed for Covid patients in Telangana.

Public health officials in the State said that due to limited availability of Remdesivir, they would be forced to employ a ‘triage system’, which means, they will be forced to distribute Remdesivir based on the degree of urgency or patient’s medical condition.

“Anticipating these difficulties, Chief Minister, K Chandrashekhar Rao and IT Minister, KT Rama Rao had held detailed talks with pharma manufacturers in Hyderabad over the production and sale of Remdesivir. Telangana was among the first States to place an order of nearly 5 lakh doses of Remdesivir, which should have been enough to see us through the entire pandemic. The Centre’s decision to regulate the availability of Remdesivir is affecting all the States,” senior doctors familiar with the issue, said.