This past month of April has been the most devastating month of pandemic. At the start of April, India had been reporting less than one lakh cases a day. This rose to almost 4 lakh cases a day (just the reported figure), with the daily count rising on every single day. It's a state of health emergency and definitely the scenario has been depressing and tiring. It's not easy for us as physicians to see visuals of thousands of people outside the hospital waiting for a bed and dying in the absence of a proper treatment. Hospitals treating COVID patients report severe shortages of beds and oxygen supplies. You ask a healthcare provider and they'll tell you how grim the situation at the ground-level is.

Not a day goes by when I hear of the demise of a distant relative or someone calling up me or my father crying for help. The doctors are overwhelmed. The healthcare system cannot take this anymore. And with almost 4 lakh cases in a day, there is no plan in place to stop this disaster.

Lives are getting destroyed. Livelihoods are getting destroyed. The government also could not regulate the market, which was flooded with overpriced masks, sanitisers, medicines and huge amount charged by hospitals is garnishing it. Mass poverty is back in India as the number of poor has doubled from 6 crores to 13.4 crores due to pandemic-induced recession. The economic crisis is yet to peak up. No wonder we have failed miserably to control it. Blame people, blame religions, blame CMs, blame parties or politicians it doesn't matter. There is no point in blaming anyone. At this point, it is a collective failure.

We can't simply sit back and watch our people dying without treatment. Because its not simply the one who dies, remains in pain, but also the ones they leave behind. So what is the solution?

The pandemic is a wake up call that an integrative approach is the most effective way to tackle this global health crisis. This is the time of introspection for us. How can we help? Can we resort back to our roots? How can homeopathy come to rescue? If yes then, is there any protocol to be followed by homeopaths across the length and breadth of the country?

And most importantly what are the apex bodies in homeopathy doing? Simply releasing guidelines with the names of a few medicines for treating non serious COVID cases! That's it? Isn't this a great opportunity to be used in doing trials and treating critical patients who have been declared hopeless? Is there any official research going on? If yes then how and where?

I ask my fraternity that there were trials of 3 homeopathic medicines being conducted by CCRH from October 2020, which were likely to be completed in Feb 2021. Has it completed? If yes what were the results?

As of now, the social media is flooded with messages of Aspidosperma Q and others. Is there any official study started of the same?

This is high time we should unite and work. It depends upon us whether we continue taking it as a crisis or convert it into an opportunity for the betterment of our system in particular and our country in general. 

When will we get the chance to deal with the patients? If not now then when?