Hyderabad:The country’s villages, where 65 percent of India’s population lives, are facing a vexatious problem in the form of COVID-19 surge. Last year, COVID cases surfaced in villages five months after they were reported in cities. Almost 490 districts in the country have reported more than 10 percent covid positive cases and 36.08 percent of them are from rural districts, according to the data from the month of March.
Their number rose to 45.5 percent in April and this month, the number of villages with covid surge further increased to 48.5 percent. News reports indicated that rural India surpassed the country’s urban areas with 44 percent reported covid cases last month.
After the situation went out of control, the latest guidelines call upon the State governments to focus their attention on villages, tribal hamlets and the outskirts of towns to provide medical services to everyone having covid symptoms.
Medical systems are collapsing even in urban areas where almost two-thirds of medical and health facilities are concentrated.
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The government has said that the community medical officer and ANM should be trained to conduct rapid antigen tests to determine covid positivity among suspects.
It is astonishing to note that the administrations are yet to ascertain the reasons behind the tragedies that struck villages like Libberheri of Uttarakhand where 30 persons died of covid in a span of one month. Our villages are deprived of primary health care facilities. One is left to wonder as to how the Center can believe that its new guidelines can shield our villages from the pandemic.
Addressing a ceremony on Panchayati Raj Divas, Prime Minister Modi said “I have confidence that if someone is going to emerge victorious first in this fight against corona virus, then it is going to be India’s villages. The people of the villages will show the way to the country and the World.”
Villages are witnessing the horrendous dance of death because of the proclivity of our leaders to pass time with pleasing words instead of protecting villages with concrete advance strategy.
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The covid situation in states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal is truly alarming. The Center has itself announced about a month ago that all the sub-centers, primary health centers and community health centers in the country are in a whirl of scarcities. Ironically the Center is now saying that it wants to break the back of covid with the help of these centers.
There are four villages under the purview of each health sub-center. Similarly, 27 villages are located under a primary health center and a community health center covers 127 villages. These centers are crippled by 80,600 vacant positions.
Can the health centers where 76 percent special medical posts are vacant shield our villages from Covid? When the medical staff in cities is itself are tired of providing medical services to corona patients, can the rural health centers withstand the pressure?
Even in this crisis situation, some villages are strictly following measures to effectively stall the pandemic from entering their limits. Such awareness alone can protect villages from the onslaught of COVID19.
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