KK Shailaja: The Communist leader who led an Indian state through Covid

KK Shailaja was enthralled by each of the roughly a billion different species of bacteria, fungus, and other bacteria that live on Earth.

She compared them to atoms, the actual, small components that make up and keep the community up.

She had no idea, however, that she would one day be in charge of waging war against a virus that may change the course of history and endanger Kerala, the lovely state of 35 million people in southern India, which may ravage the entire planet.

As the health minister of Kerala in 2020, Ms. Shailaja, also known as” teacher,” wrote a rare success story in which she successfully combated the Covid – 19 pandemic, which propelled her to international fame. She was dubbed a” corona slayer” by The Guardian and one of the 12 most powerful women of 2020 by the Financial Times. She received an invitation to the UN Public Service Day panel, and Prospect Magazine in the UK named her the Covid era’s greatest scholar.

Her latest political memoir, My Life As A Comrade, which was released on Thursday, is based on her experiences leading a position through the crisis and growing up in India’s only Communist position.

As a physics teacher, Ms. Shailaja told the BBC that medical thinking has always been an essential component of her decision-making system as the health minister, or” default situation.” Covid-19’s arrival in India was always essential in my opinion, and handling it was a matter of when, not if, she claims.

However, she was a staunch Communist who saw connections in it. You may think in all those things at once in our beautiful, forested neighborhood because belief, religion, and socialism were never at chances.

Ms. Shailaja, who was raised in a small town in the Kannur city, claims that her Ammamma, or grandmother, an ardent Socialist leader who contributed to the smallpox outbreak in Kerala, deeply inspired her. She learned about the methods the Socialist party combated fear and false information and taught people how to treat the contagious disease through her Ammamma. Ms. Shailaja claimed she had no idea she had one day be in charge of carrying out the same action.

Kerala reported the second Covid – 19 situation in India in January 2020. The patient was a medical school who had just returned from Wuhan. According to Ms. Shailaja, coronavirus wasn’t a common dictionary at the time, and hardly anyone was talking about it in India. However, in Kerala, the state authority had already established 18 rapid response teams, opened a management room, and stationed health personnel at the four state flights so that anyone could voluntarily report any signs.

Ms. Shailaja stated that the government” used its Nipah virus process- the state had safely fought an epidemic in 2018″ and” made modifications based on what was undoubtedly understood about Covid” in a crisis marked by extreme doubt.

Ms. Shailaja stated that she had two choices: either facilitate the virus to distribute so that individuals may develop herd immunity. Alternatively, stop the spread by identifying cases shortly, finding emails, and isolating the sick.

She was aware that a virus like this was devastating not only because it was highly contagious, but also because its underlying flaws— a chronicly underfunded healthcare system, inadequate access, and the lack of necessary safety nets, could be exploited.

On these metrics, Kerala performs better than the majority of states, but the condition is densely populated, and 15 % of its residents are over 60 years old. Additionally, it is heavily exposed to foreign travel and employs 17 % of its working-age people around, making the state susceptible to outbreaks.

She stated that” Containment was the only way forward ,” and the state decided to follow the test, trace, and isolate playbook.

Kerala appeared to be primed to carry the virus for a few decades. There were times when it didn’t report any fresh occasions. Trying was common, there were few fatalities, and the nation’s most advanced healthcare system was not overworked. Sometimes people as old as 98 were saved, according to Ms. Shailaja.

However, the condition started reporting about 800 infections per day by mid-July, and by November, Kerala had more than 500,000 diseases.

Kerala, a position with only 3 % of India’s people, started to account for more than half of the country when the terrible second storm claimed thousands of lives in the summer of 2021. Even as the crisis waned in some regions of the nation, infections increased and showed no signs of subsiding, even though the death rate remained low.

Critics of the state’s public grew as it struggled to contain the disease.

According to experts, Kerala’s call tracing system did not perform as well in the next level as it had during the first flood. Many claimed that Kerala had already made the error of letting celebrations continue, which resulted in large crowds. Although the state initially succeeded in” flattening the curve ,” the effort they invested was wasted because even the insurance result, according to experts, had been anemic.

Some of the censure, according to Ms. Shailaja, was cruel. ” Every reported Covid case in the state started to carry a whiff of failure because we did so well during the first phase.”

Additionally, she added that despite the rising number of cases, Keralan hospitals were not overrun and that our deaths rate remained low throughout.

However, experts think that Kerala’s quite lower fatality rate was insufficient. According to reports, there was a significant undercounting of murders in the position, and deaths were attributed to underlying medical conditions rather than suspected cases.

Mr. Shailaja disputes the accusations in her narrative. She told the BBC,” We did the best job we had.”

When compared to some American states’ bad performance, most experts agree that Kerala did an excellent job of containing the coronavirus outbreak.

According to Ms. Shailaja,” I believe the most significant thing we did was also the simplest: we took Covid truly.”

But she added that what made a difference was the socialist tenet of the state government, which was to” put people at the center of their insurance.”

According to Ms. Shailaja, the health industry may occur alone. This is due to the fact that diseases affect society as a whole and go beyond the particular. Diseases are not just an internal conflict between hosts and micro foes. Additionally, the disease can only be combated with vaccinations.

For general social progress, more structural reforms are necessary. After all, it is connected, she claims.

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