‘BEST gave me a lifeline, I am indebted to it forever’

Todankar with his wife Mangal at their Prabhadevi residence. Pic/Ashish Raje

After struggling to get a bed in the ICU at city hospitals with 36 pc oxygen level, and then battling for life on ventilator and being in a hospital for 40 days, a BEST bus conductor with 29 years of service is back at work. The story of 52-year-old Subhash Todankar shows how tough it was to fight the COVID-19 battle which drained him, his family, physically, financially, and emotionally. Todankar's employers, the BEST Undertaking and its medical department, stood by him rock solid and brought him back from the jaws of death.

It was May 2020, the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city. Local trains and much of public transport had shut and it was the only BEST Undertaking that was running its buses. Todankar was also working and fine till he started getting a body ache around mid-May.

He approached a doctor near his house at Prabhadevi and took his medicine. The Santacruz bus depot gave him a letter for a check-up at the Cooper Hospital in Vile Parle. "But just a day after I began treatment, I had trouble breathing and felt tired and uneasy. My wife Mangal, daughter and relatives got worried. On May 23 we went to Hinduja Hospital at Mahim. Doctors found my oxygen level was down to 87 per cent. They advised us to immediately go to Kasturba Hospital for Infectious Diseases at Chinchpokli," he said. "There was no ICU bed available and then we went to GT, Saifee Hospitals but no ICU bed was available. Then the BEST management called my family to tell them that they had managed to get a bed at Nair Hospital and I should be taken there immediately. I had been in an ambulance for three to four hours," he said.

"At Nair Hospital, I was on oxygen for two to three days. On the third day, I felt giddy and collapsed in the bathroom. My family was told to move me as they did not have a ventilator. My oxygen levels had dipped to 36 pc and I was critical."

‘Doctors saved me'
With the help of pulmonologist and Chief Medical Officer of BEST Dr Anil Kumar Singal, they managed to get admission to Wockhardt Hospital at Mumbai Central.

"My family had been told that I could probably live for only about 10-15 days. At the hospital, the pulmonologist and intensivist breathed life back into me. I was in the hospital for 40 days, of which about 25 days I was almost unconscious. Dr Singal and his team used to check on my health every day. The hospital bill was nearly R24 lakh and we paid as much as we could, after which my wife again sought the help of the BEST management. The BEST management settled the claim," he said tearfully. "The BEST management went out of the way to help me. As per regulations, the staff is supposed to be entitled to treatment only at government hospitals, but BEST gave me a lifeline, I will remain indebted to it forever," he said.

"Much before the lockdown the first meeting related to the pandemic was organised. General Manager Surendra Bagde was involved right from the beginning. Now things are slowly stabilising. In fact, in the past 60 days, the number of patients has also declined significantly. A total of 2,928 employees were COVID-19 positive in the past one year of which 2,812 recovered. Every day, almost 500 employees are examined. Over 7,000 sessions of awareness have held with 1,60,000 plus Vitamin C, D and zinc tablet packets distributed among them," Dr Singal said.