KK Shailaja
(Teacher) - Kerala's Rock Star Health Minister
In a pandemic of the
nature of Covid 19 of 2019-20, a highly contagious respiratory impairment
disease, containment of community
transmission is directly linked to containment of the disease.
While the whole
world struggled and still struggles with containment,
the little state of Kerala in India with 35 million people (half of UK and
tenth of US population with 7 and 4 percent per capita income of the two
countries, respectively) did it successfully, going by the book: following the
WHO protocol to the ‘T’ ‘I’ and ‘S’: test,
trace, isolate and
support.
The architect behind
the successful containment is a kindly, cheerful, bespectacled former secondary
school science teacher, KK Shailaja (Teacher), who has acquired many nicknames
including one promoted by The
Guardian, ‘The coronavirus slayer!’ in an article published on Thurs 14 May
2020 titled ‘The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister
helped save it from Covid-19’.
There are many media vehicles
that have covered the minister’s achievements in effective disease containment,
including the Malayalam film ‘Virus’ which essayed her story battling the
‘Nipah’ virus.
What
lessons can we derive from the Health Minister's proactive response to the
pandemic, who succeeded twice over, battling community transmitted
infectious diseases that potentially could affect 35 million in her state?
1.
Belief: that the virus can be contained, strengthened by
her earlier experience combating the Nipah virus successfully
2.
Foresight: that such epidemics can occur again
3.
Proactivity: created enabling infrastructure for containment
based on the Nipah experience
4.
Response: with alacrity and speed based on news of the virus
which she read online (serendipity?) when WHO had yet to wake up to the deathly
scourge, definitively
5.
Mobilization: of Kerala health care team to act expeditiously
6.
Empowering: the team down the line to take judgment calls
7.
Authority: Used the government machinery and resources
effectively to build confidence in the care takers to do the job that had to be
done
8.
Collaboration: pressing the law and order department to enforce
rules on quarantine
9.
Leading: from the front – visiting infected areas –
educating and calming nerves – and dealing with issues as they came up: when
ambulance drivers feared infection, she gave them the necessary accoutrements
to protect themselves, offered pay hikes, and also medical insurance for
treatment in case of infection
10. Empathy: did all of
above with infectious serenity and deep empathy that built profound confidence
in her frontline team
Some extracts from
The Guardian article fleshes out the lessons for better appreciation of the
minister’s her day-to-day manoeuvring, decision-making and leadership chops.
“On 20 January, KK Shailaja
made a phone call to one of her medically trained deputies who confirmed that
the Covid-19 virus was indeed serious.
“Four months later, Kerala has
reported only 524 cases of Covid-19, four deaths and – according to Shailaja – no
community transmission. By contrast, the UK has reported 40,000 deaths and the
US has reported more than 82,000 deaths. Both countries have rampant community
transmission.
“How has this been achieved?
Three days after reading about the new virus in China, and before Kerala had
its first case of Covid-19, Shailaja held the first meeting of her rapid
response team. The next day, 24 January, the team set up a control room and
instructed the medical officers in Kerala’s 14 districts to do the same at their
level. By the time the first case arrived, on 27 January, via a plane from
Wuhan, the state had already adopted the World Health Organization’s protocol
of test, trace, isolate and support.
“At the height of the virus in
Kerala, 170,000 people were quarantined and placed under strict surveillance by
visiting health workers, with those who lacked an inside bathroom housed in
improvised isolation units at the state government’s expense.
“That number has shrunk to
21,000. “We have also been accommodating and feeding 150,000 migrant workers
from neighbouring states who were trapped here by the lockdown,” she says. “We
fed them properly – three meals a day for six weeks.” Those workers are now
being sent home on charter trains.
“When Shailaja’s party came to
power in 2016, it undertook a modernisation programme. One pre-pandemic
innovation was to create clinics and a registry for respiratory disease – a big
problem in India. “That meant we could spot conversion to Covid-19 and look out
for community transmission,” Shailaja says. “It helped us very much.”
“When the outbreak started,
each district was asked to dedicate two hospitals to Covid-19, while each
medical college set aside 500 beds. Separate entrances and exits were
designated. Diagnostic tests were in short supply, especially after the disease
reached wealthier western countries, so they were reserved for patients with
symptoms and their close contacts, as well as for random sampling of
asymptomatic people and those in the most exposed groups: health workers,
police and volunteers.
The successful containment
by the Health Minister KK Shailaja and the Kerala government headed by Chief
Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, stands in stark contrast to how some of the most
powerful world leaders of the Western world responded to the Covid 19 pandemic.
Notably, the US
White House and the President of the United States of America, Donald J Trump,
the most powerful man in the world, who stayed in denial for too long to
effectively administer containment of the virus – and the same could be said of
some of the European Heads of State where the virus has taken its unpardonable
toll.
The leadership of
the Kerala State and the governments of the Western world had the same notice
period to the deadly nature of the disease. Only one took it seriously. The
others hoped wistfully that the virus will die from jetlag. President Trump was
unequivocal that the virus will vaporise with the heat when it touches American
shores. ‘The sun never sets on America’. Oops! That was Britain. We know where
such hubris leads to – rising death toll and collapse of a whole empire.
In God's Own Country
the literacy rate according to one report is 90.90%; the response to the
Covid-19 pandemic is 100%.
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