Mumbai Fights Back

Book excerpt: How do you tame a wild virus in a city of 12 million people? This petrifying thought was at the top of many minds when the first two cases of coronavirus were detected in Mumbai on March 11, 2020. Covid-19, which had brought big nations with robust health systems down to their knees, soon found its way to Mumbai’s densest localities, including Dharavi. The coronavirus pandemic was Mumbai’s fourth encounter with a health emergency of an overwhelming scale. In 1896, the city had fought the bubonic plague. In 1918, the deadly Spanish Flu swept the city. Ninety-one years later, Mumbai was once again in the grip of a virus- Influenza H1N1. Then came the coronavirus, the biggest pandemic of the 21st century yet. Suresh Kakani’s Mumbai Fights Back offers a blow by blow account of the challenges and triumphs of India’s richest civic body in fighting an invisible enemy for two years. From erecting mammoth field hospitals on open grounds to guaranteeing beds for every patient, the book rivetingly chronicles the united efforts by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to curb the transmission and save lives.