Amid the havoc wreaked by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, rural areas of the country were among the worst hit. The pandemic affected such areas more due to ill-equipped medical infrastructure as well as lack of facilities and experts.
The story read the same in Ahmednagar’s [Maharashtra] Akole taluka, a village with a population of 25,000, where locals buckled under the weight of the health crisis.
“After contracting COVID-19, patients did not seek medical help for the first couple of days. Later, they underwent an RT-PCR test, but the results came only after a week. By the time the patient could confirm that they had been infected, their health had deteriorated, with oxygen levels dropping to 80 or below,” says Rajendra Sadgir, a primary teacher at the Zilla Parishad school, Parkhatpur.
The village has only one private hospital with 30 beds which started falling short as cases increased. “The next available medical facility is 70 km away at Ghatghar in…