RGGGH: War room that brought virus to its knees

IF Tamil Nadu has achieved the rare feat of containing Covid – which even developed Western nations are grappling to deal with – it’s largely because of the role played by a government hospital in Chennai, which acted as one of the nerve-centres for Covid care – the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH). Countless people at this facility – from doctors to sanitary workers – put their lives at risk to pull Chennai out from the clutches of the pandemic.

What kept these workers going? Day after day; month after month; for almost an entire year? “We endured tremendous amounts of mental and physical fatigue,” says N Gopalakrishnan, director of the Institute of Nephrology at RGGGH. “But, the realisation that we are in this profession, and that we need to play our part, kept us going.” At one point, Chennai was recording 2,500 fresh cases every day, and a majority of that went to RGGGH. At its peak, the hospital handled 1,804 in-patients. Daily deaths were in double digits. Now, the numbers have plunged to 100 in-patients and zero deaths. “Being a tertiary institution, we cannot drive away any patient. We had to give them the best treatment, no matter what,” says Gopalakrishnan. The patients at RGGGH were not just from Chennai but also from its neighbouring districts.