In Uttar Pradesh’s Mewla Gopalgarh village, roughly 70 kilometres from the national capital of New Delhi, a makeshift hospital has emerged for COVID-19 patients as well as for people complaining of COVID-19 symptoms as they struggle to find a bed in hospitals, both government and private.
What the villagers call a “hospital” is actually an open ground near the village’s entrance where several sick people lie on a cot under a big neem tree. Attached to the tree are glucose bottles to be used for patients from time to time. The condition in this village is symptomatic of issues faced by the entire rural population in UP during a raging pandemic due to the miserable health infrastructure in the state.
On one side, patients lie on cots under the neem tree thinking that their oxygen levels would get better due to the tree’s healing properties. On another side, a heap of cow dung, the smell of which engulfs the whole of the open ground. In the middle of several cots under the tree is a table where medicines and other medical equipment are kept.
The doctors who come to see the patients come from a nearby village. Some of these doctors are not certified, Doctor Deepak Auri, the chief medical officer, says that the administration has taken cognisance of the problem and is working to improve the situation.
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