WHILE the Goa government is reluctant to give any equipment to patients who opt for home isolation the AAP has stepped in to fill the bridge. AAP volunteers are supplying oximeters on demand. Oximeters are far less expensive and a compact alternative to ventilators. They supply oxygen to Covid-19 patients whose oxygen levels can sometimes drop dramatically, this is the most important indication that the infection is worsening.
The main course of death in Covid-19 patients is fall in blood pressure and level of oxygen in blood. To give an example, there was a great alarm over the fact that the oxygen levels in the blood of AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik, undergoing treatment at Manipal hospital in Panaji, had fallen to an alarming 10%. The normal level of oxygen in blood supply in body is 95 to 100%. If it falls below 60% the advice is to hospitalise so that the patient can be supplemented with oxygen with the help of an oximeter or other respiratory function equipment.

REMEMBERING SOME OLD JOURNALISTS

SEASONED journalist Vidyadhar Date was remembering old timers in the print business in a Facebook posting and it took many down memory lane too. Notes Date, “It is rare that a newspaper remembers its former editor on his birth centenary. The Hitavada, the English daily of Nagpur, did that in the case of Mr GT Parande, recently. The present editor Vijay Phanshikar wrote an article on the edit page on him. Mr Parande was universally known as a gentleman, I as a teenage journalist met him for the first time in the 1960s, we had a common interest, cricket.”
And more: “The Hitavada, started by Gandhiji’s political guru Gopal Krishna Gokhale, celebrated its centenary in 2011. In the 1960s Hitavada was edited by AD Mani, also a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, while the rival Nagpur Times was edited by Anant Gopal Sheorey, whose mother tongue was Marathi but who was at the time a leading Hindi novelist.
“It is sad very little is known about them today. The internet gives almost no information. Fortunately, I recently got a book on journalism written by B Someswar Rao, my colleague in Nagpur Times in the 1960s and he writes about these editors and so many other journalists.
Jaya Bhaduri’s father Taroon Kumar Bhaduri was chief reporter of Nagpur Times and later he worked for the Statesman in Bhopal. PY Deshpande, a Sahitya Akademi winner and acclaimed literary critic, was also editor of Nagpur Times for some time. Noted Sarvodaya leader, Nirmala Deshpande, most trusted by Indira Gandhi, was his daughter.
“Someswar recalls that when he worked on the desk he handled the copy of Motilal Vora who was then the paper’s correspondent in Tumsar town. He later became the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. I remember reading the byline of the TOI Washington correspondent HR Vohra. Someswar recalls that the same Vohra was the approver in the Bhagat Singh trial.
“Someswar also recalls how Chalapati Rau, one of the most outstanding journalists in India, died a lonely death at a wayside tea stall in Delhi and remained unidentified for a long time in 1983. He was very close to Jawaharlal Nehru, edited his National Herald for many years and wrote acclaimed books on journalism and on Nehru. He was unceremoniously ousted from the paper in 1978.
“Chalapati, a bachelor, had his larynx removed for throat cancer and spoke with the help of a mechanical device in later days. Manikonda Chalapathi Rau (also known as MC and Magnus, 1910 – 25 March 1983) was considered an authority on Nehruvian thought. Rau was editor of National Herald of Lucknow for over 30 years from 1946. The National Herald was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938. He wrote several books on Indian journalism, politics and personalities. During the independence struggle he was part of the underground press movement.
“He was the first president of the Indian Federation of Working Journalists (in 1950) and continued to be so till 1955. He was the leader of the Indian Press Delegation, which accompanied Nehru on his historic 1955 tour of the USSR, Poland and Yugoslavia. He was a member of the Indian government’s goodwill mission to China in 1952.
“He was a member of the UNESCO Press Experts Committee and also worked on various UNESCO Commissions. He was India’s representative to the United Nations General Assembly (1958). He was also a member of the Initiating Committee of the International Press Institute. Someswar’s book A Town Called Penury contains some lively anecdotes. He has now settled in Bangalore. Age has not blunted his enthusiasm, he remains busy writing, editing.”