From desilting sites to dinner with Covid task force, state politicians play their ace cards

While chief minister Eknath Shinde got his shoes dirty on Thursday when he visited the Mithi River, in BKC, to oversee the desilting work ahead of monsoon, claiming to be “a field person and a people’s person”, on Wednesday, Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray had surprised former members of Covid-19 task force by inviting them to a dinner to express his appreciation for their work.

Mumbai: With the civic polls due in a few months, the assembly and Lok Sabha elections next year, Maharashtra has entered a politically charged time, and its key players are putting their best foot forward.

From desilting sites to dinner with Covid task force, state politicians play their ace cards

While chief minister Eknath Shinde got his shoes dirty on Thursday when he visited the Mithi River, in BKC, to oversee the desilting work ahead of monsoon, claiming to be “a field person and a people’s person”, on Wednesday, Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray had surprised former members of Covid-19 task force by inviting them to a dinner to express his appreciation for their work.

While the reason for the invite was not disclosed, doctors said they were touched and surprised that the former chief minister applauded them for guiding his government in dealing with the pandemic in the state.

Three years since the pandemic started, the World Health Organisation on May 5 declared that Covid-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking its symbolic end.

Speaking about the dinner, a member of the task force said, “We were not told the reason behind the invite. We got the call in the evening and were asked to come to Taj Lands End. We were touched and overwhelmed by the way he personally thanked us and said managing the pandemic would not have been possible without our input. It was also the first time we all met casually.”

“During the pandemic days, the meetings used to be intense as we spoke of Covid-19 numbers, mortalities, looking at Covid-19 scenarios across the globe, learnings, and measures we could recommend; last evening’s conversation was in a lighter vein,” said a member of the former task force.

During the three-hour-long meet, Thackeray thanked doctors personally, and the invitees chatted about vaccines and the number of times they got the virus.

Dr Suhas Prabhu, former chairman of paediatric Covid-19 task force, said, “Last year we were felicitated at a state government function, when he was the CM. Now, he is no longer the CM and yet he called and thanked us in his personal capacity. That touched me.”

Dr Prabhu recalled how Thackeray had called him during the thick of the pandemic in May 2021, when speculation was rife that the third wave will affect the children.

“I was surprised to get a call from him on my phone. There was an adult task force in place and they told him why he needed another. He said it was important to have paediatric task force to prepare, given the prediction of a third wave which would affect children,” he said.

Dr Prabhu remembered how Thackeray encouraged creating paediatric beds and buying equipment suitable for childcare, “unconcerned about the money needed to be spent”.

“He had said, ‘I do not want to see a single mother in my state struggling to get Covid-19 treatment/ medical help of her child’. This was not the statement of a politician but a human being,” he said.

Maharashtra was the first to form a task force when the state’s Covid-19 mortality rate was double that of the rest of the country. The task force comprised specialist doctors to suggest measures to minimise the mortality rate for the clinical management of the Covid-19 patients.

The state paediatric Covid-19 task force members resigned four days after Shinde’s government came into power. They had put down guidelines, recommendations and training modules to treat Covid-19 in paediatric population and identify post Covid-19 complications such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a condition where lungs, kidneys and the heart can become inflamed, which could turn into a life-threatening condition.

It also played a key role in forming guidelines for the safe reopening of schools after a two-year gap. In their last meeting, the team had insisted on Covid-19 vaccination at schools.

While the paediatric task force resigned, adult Covid-19 task force continued with their meetings.

“We held our meetings and sent the minutes of the meetings but never received any feedback or response from the new government,” said a member of the ex-adult Covid-19 task force, who was present at Wednesday’s get together.

“We are thankful that he acted on a lot of our advice. We feel we have done a good job,” added the doctor.

With the recent rise in Covid-19 cases, the adult Covid-19 task force formed by Thackeray was replaced with a new task force, which is now headed by Dr Subhash Salunkhe.

The dinner meet also included Dr Muffazal Lakdawala, a well-known bariatric surgeon, who volunteered to set-up the NSCI-Worli Jumbo Centre with Covid-19 cases going up in Worli, which is Aaditya Thackeray’s constituency. He later became the primary doctor of the Thackerays when the family was infected with the virus in 2021.

“When I volunteered for my service in the pandemic, I didn’t even know him. We worked very closely during the pandemic. We worked on the concept of jumbo centres, thought out-of-the-box on contactless treatment, digitising healthcare and creating ICUs in railway containers. We got oxygen concentrators way before the rest of India thought about it. Maharashtra managed the pandemic better elsewhere in the country because of these measures,” said Dr Lakdawala.