Amrit Dhillon & Saurabh Sharma - India's invisible catastrophe: fears over spread of Covid-19 into poor rural areas
As India’s positive cases hovered around 2.4m, there are growing
fears that the virus’s impact on rural communities could be devastating. The country seems to be entering a dangerous new phase of
rising infections in small towns and villages such as Khankari. Some 600 million Indians live in in rural areas, and fears
are rising that they could be overwhelmed by an invisible catastrophe, where
many will die without testing or treatment. Data from the National Family
Health Survey-4 showed that only about 25% of rural Indians have access to
public outpatient (OPD) healthcare..
There are also grave concerns for around 70% of India’s
elderly population, who live in villages. Co-morbidities abound and are often
left untreated because medical services are far away. India’s top epidemiologist Jayaprakash Muliyil, who believes
up to half of India’s population (670 million people) will get the virus, says
that most people with co-morbidities in rural India fail to get
treatment.
“This group, and the
elderly, are more prone to getting the virus. With limited resources, their
families will not rush an elderly person to hospital if they have a fever,”
said Muliyil. “They will be allowed to die. That is the reality in rural India
where life expectancy is 65.”...
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/17/indias-invisible-catastrophe-fears-over-spread-of-covid-19-into-poor-rural-areas
