Coronavirus | The Kerala story and challenges before India

It’s only on February 4 that the Kerala government declared coronavirus a state calamity. This declaration came close on the heels of a third person in the state testing positive for the deadly virus that has left its dangerous footprint across the world, already claiming over 500 lives, mostly in China. Now, it is almost as if Kerala has become a part of the world community suffering from an epidemic outbreak.

On January 30 Kerala announced the very first case of coronavirus in India and in the process turned the spotlight on Indian students stranded in Wuhan, in China. Wuhan is an educational hub offering ‘affordable’ medical education of international standard, with English as the medium of instruction.

What is it with Kerala and the ease it presents to the outside world while turning on its head the threat of a disaster or calamity? The resilience shown by the state to bounce back and in the process rejuvenate an otherwise flagging economy with slogans of ‘Rebuild Kerala’ is now celebrated across the world.

In 2018, the people of the state grappled with the Nipah virus outbreak and the worst flood in the century that claimed about 500 lives and wreaked destruction running into almost Rs 50,000 crore.

Though not as ferocious as its predecessor, when the 2019 flood lashed Kerala, the State machinery was better equipped to manage the disaster, with quite a few standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place after the 2018 deluge. Given this, it should not take too many analyses to pinpoint why the state’s health ministry was up and running this time when the slightest whiff of another virus outbreak came its way, all the way China.

There is more to the Kerala story than merely getting the advantage of a ‘mock run’. It’s not for nothing that Kerala has been ahead of other Indian states by a fair distance on many Human Development Indices. A robust health administration mechanism running on the wheels of government-run primary health centres, going all the way up to the taluk, district and state level of healthcare infrastructure at affordable rates, on par with the private hospitals in terms of technology and medical personnel, is what sets Kerala apart, allowing the state to rub shoulders with the developed world.

This is the reason why Kerala is seen to be more battle-ready than any other state in India when it comes to combating the outbreak of any epidemic or pandemic, unlike Maharashtra which buckled when it had to grapple with the H1N1 or swine flu outbreak in 2009.

Then, Pune was the epicentre of the virus outbreak with 14-year-old school girl Reeda Shaikh its first victim on August 3. In the course of the month, the dreaded virus claimed many lives primarily because of a fragile grassroots and even district-level government hospital network in the suburban areas, putting pressure on a handful of private speciality hospitals to handle the swelling number of swine flu cases.

There can never be any such fear in Kerala, whatever may be the health scare. Some of the district hospitals are more equipped than their private counterparts.

The healthcare sector in Maharashtra, and across India, has grown since then, and many achievements have been made — the eradication of polio from India being a stellar example — but, if more cases were to be detected across India it would be a challenge for the health ministry.

That said, only the naïve can ignore the political nuance of the declaration, as the state is now on the global map. By announcing to the world that it is coronavirus stricken, Kerala seems to be hedging its bets against the central government getting into a position to snub its claims for relief and rehabilitation as was done post-floods in 2018 and 2019.

At another level, the enormous presence of medical students from Kerala in Wuhan is an endorsement of the fundamental theory in economics about demand and supply. To that end, sloganeering about ‘duplicate’ Chinese-made products and services being no match to the ‘original’ indigenous versions, will deliver the goods only up to a level. If the Wuhan-trained doctors deliver the goods, then other states too will make a beeline there. Surely, coronavirus will soon be a thing of the past.

Vinod Mathew is a senior journalist based in Kochi. Views are personal.