Author: Minakshi Biswas
Author Affiliation: Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, BHK College, West Bengal State University.
Abstract: The ongoing pandemic caused by SARS CoV-2 has led to an unprecedented healthcare emergency across the globe. It has not only posed an extreme challenge to the healthcare of common masses but has also wrecked a massive threat to the medical fraternity, governments and all other spheres of humankind in general. The pandemic has served to reinforce stigma on a new level altogether, between the infected and the non-infected. Maintaining physical distance, masking oneself, avoiding crowded public spaces have been cast as the web of new normality to keep oneself safe and free from the infection. This has led to stigmatisation of the infected lot as well as the healthcare professionals who act as primary caregivers and providers of medical treatment to the infected. Securing dignity of the critically ill and dying COVID-19 patients cannot be disbanded in totality when certain institutional, community level changes and alternation of perception can do the needful. The paper attempts to argue in favour of palliative care, a mode of treatment that is existent yet not much prevalent in modern medicine, as a therapy that can be used in treating COVID-19 infected patients who are critically ill or in their deathbed in order to assure them dignity
Keywords: COVID-19, Critical Illness, Dying patients, Dignity, Palliative Care.