Vanakkam!
My message is for our future; wishing that it be filled with great hopes, firm resolutions and inspiring visions. It also speaks briefly about the present, re-visiting the lessons learned from it, and the past.
2020 was a year that brought the best out of us Kauverians, which we can be both modest and proud about.
We managed over 6000 patients with moderate, severe and critical Covid; 95% went home safely, blessing us, which makes us happy and proud.
We treated over 100 doctors; 98% went home safely, which gives us immense satisfaction.
Our confrontation with Covid is not over. What did Covid teach us about ourselves?
It exposed our weaknesses and exploited our vulnerabilities.
It challenged our strengths.
For years, actually many decades, we humans focused and worked towards amassing wealth and acquisitions, while ignoring health and families.
Covid jolted us to a rude and crude awakening.
Suddenly your wealth, possessions, position, prestige and personage did not matter anymore.
Covid came as an equalizer; we were all reduced to the same statusweak, vulnerable and frightened – suddenly aware of our mortality and the insecurity that may instantly confront our family.
Covid also came as an invader; what mattered against the virus were just two- health and hygiene.
If you had not taken care of your health, you were defenseless.
If you did not practice hygiene – at home, in the public space and at work- you left the door wide open for the virus to attack and destroy.
We Kauverians shall begin the new year with two resolutions.
We shall protect, preserve and propagate health; that of ours, our families and the community.
We shall practice, to perfection, personal and environmental hygiene.
The first resolution should draw strength from what we learned managing Covid, that Diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic lung and kidney disease and obesity were responsible for inviting severe, critical and potentially fatal disease. All of them are preventable.
The latter should be inspired by the fact that it is the greatest lesson we learned from Covid- that prevention and protection work. Pills, potions, injections and inhalations may not.
Let us not ever forget, the two crucial factors that have kept every one of our 5000 health workers safe through this pandemic are “prevention and protection.”
I now come to a deeply personal message
“Stay at home” during lockdowns made us rediscover our families, who we had ignored, or could not find time for, during our prime time.
Family is the axis of our life; if we weaken that, the edifice crumbles and crumples like a house of cards. Take care of your family, be there for them, always and every time.
I conclude by saluting, and thanking, our Covid warriors. They were greatly challenged, but are winning the war for all of us.
I wish you all great health and happiness in the year ahead.
Let us build a healthy world in our life time.
We Kauverians can do it.
Happy New Year!
Dr. Manivannan Selvaraj
Founder and Managing Director, Kauvery Group of Hospitals