AS INDIA struggles with a record surge in COVID-19 deaths, Indian priests in Brisbane are praying for the sick and suffering, and for the work of the Church to continue in their homeland.
“Even if the situation is terrible there is hope,” Fr Dantus Thottathil, parish priest at Manly and Birkdale said.
39 year-old Fr Dantus is one of more than 30 Indian priests working in the Brisbane Archdiocese, and he is in regular contact with relatives in his home state of Kerala.
He said Kerala, which is where most of Brisbane’s Indian priests come from, had escaped the worst of a COVID-19 second wave, even if the pandemic had caused record deaths across the Indian sub continent, and there is widespread reporting of a lack of medical supplies to treat the sick.
Catholic hospital directors in India have reported “the situation is very bad” with few beds available for the sick.
“Patients are on the corridors and many are dying because no beds, no oxygen,” Fr P.A. George, director of the Holy Family Hospital in New Delhi, told the Catholic News Service.
“I have no place even in emergency (area) to give oxygen.
“Patients are just dying in front of my eyes. Feeling so distressed and frustrated and helpless. It is horrible and the disaster is beyond the imagination.
“Please pray to God (to) give us strength to save some lives,” Fr George, who heads the largest Catholic hospital in New Delhi, said.
In Gujarat state, Syro-Malabar Fr Thomas Nadackalan, director of Christ Hospital in Rajkot, said, “We have to turn away around 600 cases daily.”
“We are struggling to get oxygen in time to save the lives of those admitted,” he said.
Of the 70 beds in the hospital, he added, 40 are set apart for those needing oxygen treatment.
The inadequate care and treatment in government hospitals in Ahmedabad, commercial capital of Gujarat, drew national attention as even the widespread deaths were underreported by the state government.
The National English daily The Hindu carried an investigative story exposing the hollowness of the government claim of only 78 deaths on April 16th, citing cremation of 689 bodies in seven cities alone under COVID-19 protocol in the state.
“We have lost a dozen members of our community here,” P.T. Chacko, president of Gujarat Syro-Malabar Catholic Association, said.
He, his wife and daughter were recovering from COVID-19.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, offered the church’s full support in “the war against the dreadful COVID-19 situation in the country.”
“There was lack of planning and lack of foresight. Otherwise, we would not have been in the awful situation we are in now,” Cardinal Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, said.
On April 25, India’s health ministry recorded nearly 354,000 new infections and more than 2,800 deaths.
During the week of April 18-25, India witnessed exponential spread of the pandemic across the country, and there has been widespread criticism of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for its laxity and failure to prepare for the second surge.
COVID-19 infections had peaked at 93,000 cases in mid-September in India, with 1.38 billion people. The infections declined steadily to 11,000 cases by February with daily death toll below 100.
However, the fresh infections soon started rising with daily counts reaching 52,000 on April 1.
Following the deadly second surge, India media has been witnessing an unprecedented avalanche of criticism for the severe shortage of medicines, vaccines and even oxygen that the government had been exporting to other countries.
The newspaper India Today reported the government failed to act on a February parliamentary committee report that had urged it to augment its oxygen production and supply system in preparation for a second surge.
The oxygen shortage has become the scourge of the nation, with hundreds of breathless COVID-19 victims dying even in hospitals struggling to get adequate oxygen supply.
“The nation has to fight against this pandemic on war footing,” Cardinal Gracias said.
“We have already opened … centers and (are) ready to extend all our support with our personnel and institutions in this fight.
On April 25, Cardinal George Alencherry, major archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church, urged federal and state governments “to treat the availability of medical oxygen as a basic human right.”
