Sion Hospital will on Friday give a warm send-off to one of its toughest and youngest fighters. A seven-weeks-old boy who was diagnosed with Covid-19 and operated last week for brain haemorrhage has made a stupendous recovery.
“It’s wonderful to see this 2.5-kg Covid-19-positive child, who was unconscious, critical and on ventilator support just a week ago, and is now fully conscious, playful, feeding well and moving all his limbs normally,” said Dr Alok Sharma, head of the department of neurosurgery at the hospital, who had led the nerve-wracking, complex surgery to drain pooled-up blood from the infant’s brain on May 18.
Dr Radha Ghildiyal, head of the paediatric department, said the yetto-be-named infant is off oxygen support and his post-surgery wounds have healed. “All his health parameters are normal. His second Covid-19 test result came back negative. He is fit to be discharged.”
The boy’s parents—Satish Pawar, 26, a laboratory technician, and Avni Pawar, 23, a homemaker—are counting their blessings. “When our son suffered the haemorrhage, we thought we were going to lose him. We’re indebted to the doctors,” said Satish.
Mirror’s May 19 report on the complex surgery
The infant was admitted to the hospital on May 13 after developing fever and persistent cough and cold. Two days later, he tested positive for Covid-19. Complications in the treatment arose after he began suffering convulsions on the evening of May 17. A CT scan revealed a subdural haematoma—when blood collects between the skull and the surface of the brain—on the left side of the head. An urgent surgery was the only option and a crack team of six doctors—neurosurgeons, paediatricians and anaesthetists—was put together by 3 am.
Over the next three hours, the doctors drilled a hole into the baby’s skull and drained nearly 40 ml of blood, at which point the neurological parameters began improving.
The procedure was fraught with risks for the doctors as well since the boy also had Covid-19. An anaesthetist ignored her own well-being for the sake of the child’s while inserting a pipe into his airway.
A complex surgery was undertaken on May 18 to remove blood that had collected in his brain
Administering the right dose of anaesthesia into an infant that small involves getting really close, but she struggled to do this owing to the Covid-19 protective gear she was wearing—the heavy glasses and the glass shield came in the way. Since time was of the essence, she removed the shield and the glasses to go ahead with the procedure. She was later placed under 14 days of quarantine, and has so far tested negative for the virus.
The infant is among the nine Covid-19 children below the age of 1 at Sion Hospital. A dedicated isolation facility, with paediatrics working 24x7, has been set aside for such young patients. Three of the nine infants, who arrived with severe complications and underlying conditions, could not be rescued. Three others, including the seven-weekold, who were on ventilator support, have recovered and two of them have already been discharged. The remaining are in stable condition.
In Pics: How the lockdown and coronavirus has impacted children
Their journey is long, unpredictable and severely compounded by endless problems. They have no money in their pockets, they are out of jobs in a city that was supposed to feed them and they have families that rely on them for their well-being. Migrant workers in big cities are getting crushed from multiple sides - caught in the endless cycle that has now seen thousands of them take to the highways on foot, short on hope, short on money, with nothing but the clothes on their back. The baggage they carry, both emotional and physical is a burden that's on all our consciences as the megapolis they built, let them down. Photo by Sachin Haralkar/ MMCLIn many of their impassioned appeals, migrant workers on the highway who are walking home have said they are tired of waiting for the trains to come and take them home. They have already been patient enough for 2 months but now it's not just patience that has run thin, but food, shelter and money as well. "The virus may not kill us but hunger will," said one migrant worker to Mirror as he made his way in the dead of the night along the Mumbai-Nashik highway. He was heading to Bihar, over 1700 kilometres away. Photo by Sachin Haralkar/ MMCLThis mother and child were snapped at a bus station where migrant workers had gathered before they could board buses to be taken to the train station. The state government has said it is making every effort to provide trains for migrants to head back home. Migrant workers need to fill in a form and submit it to the police following which they are called and screened when the state they want to travel to gives the permission for the train. It's only after the recipient state accepts the request that the Shramik Express is deployed to ferry migrant workers. Photo by Satyajit Desai/ MMCLCM Uddhav Thackeray said that as many as 5 lakh migrants had returned home safely from Maharashtra. But there are many others who continue to walk on highways hoping they can cross state borders and get closer to their homes. If they have money, they try to negotiate with truck drivers. Some migrant workers walking home said truckers were asking for as much as Rs 6000 per head to take them to Jharkhand, over 1700 km away. Photo by Satyajit Desai/ MMCLIt's been over two months since Maharashtra has been in lockdown. What started in mid-March has slowly taken the shape of red, orange and green zones in the state where the numbers continue to show an upward trend. Caught in the lockdown, just like everyone else, are children - some who are tired of sitting at home and some who have no option but to walk along the highways with their parents, trying to make their way home. Photo by Sachin Haralkar/ MMCLChildren are no longer an unusual sight on highways where they accompany their parents on the long walk home. They are tired, hungry and often too exhausted to carry on as the harsh summer sun saps their energy. Mirror has come across children as young as three and four months old who are on the highway with their families, trying to get home. Photo by Sachin Haralkar/ MMCLIn the midst of the migrant crisis, hardly anyone is talking of the children of migrant workers, who have become the collateral casualties of the pandemic. They have been out of schools as their parents have lost work and savings. They are still on their way home but it's not clear how or who has factored their childhood and recovery in the midst of all the economic packages and stimulus that have been announced. Photo by Satyajit Desai/ MMCL
