With Covid-19 reaching the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, the fragile health system is collapsing under pressure and people are turning to religion instead to protect themselves. (Photo: Ashutosh Mishra / India Today)
The devastating second wave of the pandemic has began to invade rural India. In the village of Bhadras in the Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, more than 20 people died over as many days in April. A local journalist said there was no way to know if they died of Covid-19 because no one was tested. However, the symptoms seem to be consistent. So these are inexplicable deaths.
Covid is making way for rural India. Clock @ PreetiChoudhry‘s basic report of Bhadras in #Uttar Pradesh. #CovidDespatch # Covid19 #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/q3E3oodRod
– IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) May 12, 2021
With hospitals few and far apart and testing capacity negligible, rural Uttar Pradesh’s health system is unable to cope with it and people have now begun to turn to religious rituals for protection. In this basic report, India Today informs you about the current situation in the villages of the state.
Sanitary crisis in the hospital
The Etawah district has seen massive increases in Covid cases, many of them from rural areas. By the time they make it to the big hospitals, many patients are in “serious” condition.
At the district’s largest government hospital, BR Ambedkar Hospital, the bathrooms in the 100-bed Covid ward were locked after plumbing workers announced they would not work in Covid wards. As a result, patients and their companions, both men and women, have no choice but to openly deflate wherever outside of the hospital they can be accommodated.
“There is a tap outside where we wash our hands and dishes. People make poop near that tap. Where else can you go? “One patient’s wife told India Today TV.
Largest hospital in #Etawah in ruins. No doctors, no plumbing workers, patients forced to openly list. | @ PreetiChoudhry #CovidDespatch # Covid19 #Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/47O6IL7AHb
– IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) May 12, 2021
There are piles of rubbish in the station. Social isolation is a distant dream and people are even lying at the station entrance. Anyone can go in; There is no such thing as security.
Also, in the two hours the India Today team spent there, no hospital administration or even medical staff could be found. The patients are cared for exclusively by their family members.
“There is no one to help. We have to open our oxygen bottles ourselves and we don’t know how, ”explained another patient’s companion.
A young woman whose mother was hospitalized was told that the hospital did not have a blood pressure monitor. Your mother is a BP patient but there is no way to check and therefore decide which medication to give.
India Today contacted the district authorities and after a few hours the Uttar Pradesh police took notice of the problem and promised action.
Nothing has changed for now, except that the garbage has been cleared from inside the station.
Problem of abundance?
Even as The nation is grappling with an acute shortage of medical care114 ventilators have been gathering dust at Firozabad Medical College in Uttar Pradesh for over a year. They were bought from the PM Cares Fund and given to the government hospital. They weren’t used at all.
Now that the inefficiency in resource allocation is known, the ventilators are being shipped to various hospitals across the state.
Dr. Alok Sharma, the hospital’s chief physician, said: “We wrote to the state government last year that we have these additional ventilators and that they can be moved to another hospital if necessary. We cannot voluntarily reassign. Now when we were asked to send them, we did so. We have no shortage in our hospital. “
“Ram Bharose”
With the collapse of the health system in rural Uttar Pradesh, people have now turned to religious rituals to protect them from the virus.
In a village in the Maharajganj district, the men and women began a nine-day ritual. They go to the edge of the village twice a day at dawn and dusk to say prayers to the Durga goddess to protect their village from Covid-19. They carry pots filled with water and flowers.
They offer prayers together while maintaining social distance. However, many of them do not wear masks.
(Photo: Ashutosh Mishra / India Today)
“We haven’t seen God, but we have faith. If we do that, Corona will go, ”said one woman.
(With contributions by Preeti Choudhry and Ashutosh Mishra)
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