Kasaragod: Karnataka government's decision to stop vehicles from Kerala, including those carrying critically ill patients to hospitals in Mangaluru, has taken one more life.
The latest victim was 70-year-old Pathunjii who lived just one kilometre away from the Kerala-Karnataka border in Talappady.
This was the second such case in as many days.
Pathunji, who hailed from Bantwal in Karnataka, came to her granddaughter's house in Udyavar near Manjeswaram (the place is just one kilometre away from the border) recently. She could not got back to her home because of the lockdown.
On Sunday, she developed health complications. However, she could not get emergency health care as the Karnataka police stopped the ambulance carrying her to a hospital in Mangaluru at the border.
Ambulance driver Mohammed Aslam said the police did not heed his repeated requests. “My pleas fell on deaf ears,” he said.
A video clip of the police sending back the ambulance back is doing rounds on the social media.
The first such death happened on Saturday. Police had stopped the vehicle carrying Abdul Hameed, 60, at the border, who later died due to breathing difficulties.
On March 27, the wife of a migrant labourer from Bihar delivered her baby in an ambulance after Karnataka police stopped the vehicle at the border.
Minister-in-charge of Dakshina Kannada, Kota Sreenivas Poojary, and Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel said that that the restrictions at the border could not be relaxed in view of the coronavirus outbreak.
Pinarayi's plea
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has written one more letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting his intervention in the issue.
"People of Kasaragod depend heavily on hospitals in Karnataka. Hundreds of patients visit Mangaluru for dialysis and for emergency medical care. Karnataka's decision to blocking the borders has put the lives of these patients in trouble," Vijayan wrote.
Meanwhile, with Kasaragod district showing a dangerous relapse of COVID-19 cases, Kerala has decided to urgently scale up the health infrastructure in the district. As a first step, Kasaragod Medical College Hospital in Ukkinadka, which began construction in 2018, will be made functional in quick time.
With 80 infected patients, Kasaragod has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in Kerala. 7,042 people are under observation in the district.
