International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | July 2020 | Vol 7 | Issue 7 Page 2797 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Pathak BG et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2020 Jul;7(7):2797-2802 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Short Communication Combating the pandemic of COVID-19 in India: health care worker perspective Barsha Gadapani Pathak, Rukman M. Manapurath* INTRODUCTION Around 3,221,029 people of the world population is infected by novel coronavirus (COVID-19) which has resulted into almost 228,252 deaths resulting into the complete shut-down of the major countries of the world. 1 Billions of people around world are at a lock down phase but the health care workers are completely invested in finding the suspected, treating the infected and protecting the healthy by initiating and following a strategic protocol. Nevertheless, the health care workers are subjected to high risk of contracting COVID-19. In many of the developed countries the front-line workers are impacted by COVID-19 infections. Many of the health care workers have lost their lives while treating COVID- 19 cases. Nonetheless, Singapore which was among the 1st countries in the world to have COVID-19 positive cases after China, has meticulously protected their HCWs from getting infected from COVID-19. 2 Ever since, the 1st cases of COVID-19 had emerged in Singapore, health dept. informed staff to defer leave and travel plans. Meanwhile, hospitals swiftly split their workforces into teams to ensure there were enough workers if the outbreak worsened, and to ensure, workers got enough rest. 2 Hence proper strategies on appropriate time can be helpful. India has 1.3 billion people and by following the epidemic model around 1 million people will have serious manifestation of COVID-19 and may require ventilatory support and constant vigilance of healthcare workers ABSTRACT As the pandemic of COVID-19 intensifies there is a huge burden on the health care system of each country. As predicted by epidemic model, India with 1.3 billion population and only 0.76 doctors per thousand people will have 1 million people affected by COVID-19 needing ventilatory support. This situation focusses on the substantial thrust on health care workers in India while dealing with the pandemic and protection of the health care workers from COVID- 19 infection is significant as they are the key-groups in health system to procure win-battle status against COVID-19. Henceforth, after meticulously comparing various countries’ strategies to protect their HCWs this brief study is being prepared and few recommendations has been suggested which may enable the protection of HCWs in India. Un- interrupted supply of appropriate PPE, phenomenon of presenteeism among HCWs, burn-outs among HCWs, front- line department protocol for protection of HCWs, need of constant psycho-analysis among HCWs, stigma in society for HCWs, prophylaxis for HCWs against COVID-19 and HCWs’ family concerns are some of the issues which are being highlighted in this paper. Keywords: Health care workers, COVID-19, India, Heath care system Department of Community Medicine, Seth G.S. Medical College and K.E.M Hospital, Parel, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Received: 30 April 2020 Revised: 03 June 2020 Accepted: 04 June 2020 *Correspondence: Dr. Rukman M. Manapurath, E-mail: pathakbarsha@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20203016