At 11 pm on Thursday, four Covid-positive women at the government-run Vani Vilas Hospital went into labour. Four hours later, a team of obstetricians was posing with the 100th baby — a boy — of infected mothers that they successfully delivered.
The rare feat has brought joy to the doctors whose gruelling pandemic schedule demands that they work through shifts wearing adult diapers, as they cannot take restroom breaks in PPEs.
The doctors at the hospital have so far tended to 350 Covid-positive women in various stages of pregnancy. About 150 of them are currently at the Trauma and Emergency Care Centre (TECC) of Victoria Hospital.
The 100 babies include four sets of twins. Seventy-six were born through caesarean sections. All newborns tested negative for coronavirus.
“We delivered the first baby of a woman from Padarayanapura on May 9. We haven’t stopped since. Delivery rooms are usually joyous with the husbands, mothers-in-law or birth companions accompanying the women in labour. But now, it’s all sombre, with our inability to even talk much during delivery,” said Dr Anitha G S, assistant professor, Bangalore Medical College and Research Centre (BMCRI).
It’s extremely difficult to breathe in a PPE, all the while counselling the women that everything will be okay, said Dr Anitha, who was part of 47 of the 100 deliveries at the hospital. None of the doctors assisting in childbirth have got infected so far.
Since the start of the pandemic, this has been their schedule — to be on call 24/7 for seven days, with only a five-day quarantine break between their shifts. At the end of five days, if they test negative they get back to work.
Vani Vilas Hospital delivers 3,000 babies per month and its doctors are now tending to both Covid and non-Covid pregnant women. This week alone, there have been 66 deliveries and 140 admissions of Covid-suspected pregnant women at TECC's isolation ward. No hospital's doctors in the city are managing non-Covid, Covid-suspected and Covid pregnant women together.
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