KARACHI: Mind-numbing details of how Dr Furganul Haq, a former physician at the Karachi Institute of Heart Diseases, diedafter contracting the coronavirus because he could not und a bed with a ventilator in any of Karachi`s hospitals and even a man who was in an ambulance that carried him was unwilling to touch him, have reinforced the fears that many of us did not have the courage to express earlier.

No need to apportion blame here. It will fetch us nothing. All we can do is learn from what we are not doing. It seems that while the lockdown was the right step to take to keep the curve of the virus in check, make no mistake, there were a great many things to be done alongside it. First of all,administrative steps should have been taken to come up with standard operadng procedures (SOPs) for hospitals as well. There was always likelihood that the number of patients would increase exponentially, and if such a scenario reared its head, how medical f acilities would be provided to them without being unfair to anyone needed to be worked out. One knows that it`s easier said than done in a country like Pakistan, especially in a city like Karachi whose population is bursting at the seams. Still, that`s what governments are put in power for.

We have been constantly hear-ing that we need not fear the virus but fight it (darna nahin larna hai).

If Dr Haq`s case can be taken as an example, one can clearly see that there`s an element of fright that exists in those whose job it is to make the patients feel comfortable. That`s understandable. No one wants to catch the virus. But it`s been more than two months since the first coronavirus case was reported in the country. The authorities should have been alerted enough to supply doctors, nurses and other hospital staff with the kind of equipment that made them feel secure to go close to patients. It`s not that our federaland provincial governments are not doing that; they are. However, given the seriousness and grimness of the situation they should have been doing that on war-footing. It`s a battle that no one knows how long we have to fight, so shortage of anything related to treatment of the disease will just not yield f avourable results.

News coming out of isolation centres, though not fully corroborated, also paint a bleak picture.

The patients in some of the centres feel as if they`re in prison and not a medical facility. If that`s what they`re feeling, then it`s such a gross nullification of the whole exercise. Here one is reminded of a case in which a relative of an acquaintance tested positive for the virus, and the entire family of the patient was afraid that theauthorities would whisk him away and put him in isolation there was more of a sense of persecution than care.

Three words come to mind: compassion, care and mercy.

One should acknowledge the wholehearted effort that our governments and medical practi-tioners are putting in. At the same time, they should train their staff to not to panic when met with a crisis that requires them to be compassionate and calm more than duty-bound.

Perhaps the following lines from Shakespeare`s The Merchant of Venice will drive the point homepersuasively: The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes...