New Delhi, May 14, 2020: Naresh Trehan, a world renowned cardiac surgeon from India, has urged his fellow citizens to behave themselves to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

“To fight this war, we need to behave ourselves, by changing our social behavior pattern. Hands hygiene, masking, and distancing. We will be able to contain this menace, if we behave responsibly,” Trehan, the chairman of Medanta City Hospital, told The Hindustan Times on May 14.

The surgeon’s appeal from came as India heads for the fourth phase of lockdown, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi says will be completely different.

Trehan says since the vaccine for the coronavirus is still far away, the fight against the Covid-19 is a “people’s war” and even though doctors are the frontline warriors. The war has to be won by the whole population, he told The Hindustan Times.

If the advice is not heeded the repercussions could be disastrous, warns the 73-year-old doctor who had practiced at New York University Medical Center in Manhattan for 17 years before returning to India in 1988 to start Delhi’s Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre.

“We will have a spread which will be unmanageable given our population,” added the graduate from Lucknow’s King George Medical College.

Trehan, who has served as personal surgeon to the Indian president since 1991, stressed a constant “hammering of the fact that the only way to survive this is to act responsibly.”

On the question of restarting the economic activity, Trehan said it should be done in a “calibrated” manner.

“We are at a juncture where economic activity must be opened, and opened gradually in a calibrated manner with monitoring,” he said.

Talking about the serpentine queues seen outside liquor shops, Trehan said the states must pitch in too and play their part. He said there will be confusion, but it should not turn to chaos.

On the migrants’ situation, the doctor urged the federal government to make a “cohesive plan.”

“If you decide to send them back, then make it possible for them to go back. We still see people walking on the streets. We must manage ourselves properly. We must have a cohesive thinking. It’s heart wrenching,” he added.

Source: The Hindustan Times