On the occasion of World Family Doctors’ day, young family doctors from across the country met on a virtual platform at Spice Route India cafe, to share their experience about providing Primary Health Care during the challenging situation of the current COVID-19 pandemic. This event was organised by Spice Route India under the leadership of Dr Serin Kuriakose, Dr Jyotika Gupta, Dr Kailas P, Dr Mohammed Idris and state leads on May 17, 2020 from 9:00 - 11:00 pm.
Spice Route India is a young doctors movement under the aegis of AFPI. And this event was first of its kind in its history.
This also marked the pleasant inauguration of the Spice Route India website by National Vice President AFPI, Col. (Dr) Mohan Kubendra. Link to the website : https://spiceroute.afpikerala.in/
More than 70 doctors participated in the cafe and family doctors from 11 states of India shared their personal experience in caring for patients during COVID 19. Participants were from across the country - spanning from Rajasthan to Nagaland and Haryana to Kerala - and included senior physicians ,young family medicine post graduates and MBBS students as well. Not to forget, we had our guests and colleagues from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh too, as a part of Spice Route SAR.
Varied experiences were shared. Running private clinics with precautions, using tele-medicine as triage, working in the public health sector, attending to COVID patients in the ICUs, to name a few.
Dr Piyush Jain, member of National Executive AFPI and Nodal officer at District hospital, Agra ,was the chief guest and he brought to light the challenges in careful management of chronic illness and non-communicable diseases during pandemic.
All in all, it was refreshing to take a pause and reflect on our practices, emotions, behavioural changes that our patients and we practitioners are going through, and what to expect going forward. It also brought the sense of collective learning and togetherness among the warriors in the current battle!