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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 'To Tackle COVID In Rural India, Enable At-Home Care, Involve Panchayats, NGOs' -Govindraj Ethiraj

'To Tackle COVID In Rural India, Enable At-Home Care, Involve Panchayats, NGOs' -Govindraj Ethiraj

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published Published on May 14, 2021   modified Modified on May 14, 2021

-IndiaSpend.com

The best way to arrest the COVID surge in India's villages is to rebuild people's trust in public systems, encourage home care and use simple technologies, say experts

Mumbai: The number of COVID-19 cases in India is now slowing down a bit, with around 350,000 cases and fewer than 4,200 deaths every day. We know by now that on both numbers, there is considerable under-counting.

The number of cases at a national level does not also represent, or perhaps hides, what is happening in rural India. What we do know now, through anecdotal measurements, either in terms of the number of deaths or the field work of many organisations, is that cases in rural India are now much higher than ever?

What is the impact of COVID-19 on rural India? How do we put in place medium and long-term plans to improve the public health infrastructure in villages? I'm pleased to be joined by two guests today. Dr Pavitra Mohan is secretary and co-founder of Basic Healthcare Services, a non-profit that has been working primarily in southern Rajasthan. He is based out of Udaipur and was earlier a senior health specialist at UNICEF India. He has an MBBS and then an MD from the Delhi University and a masters in public health from the University of North Carolina, US. I'm also joined by Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. She was earlier the country director of the McArthur Foundation. She has a masters in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She has been speaking on many issues relating to health and other outcomes in rural India.

Edited excerpts:

Miss Mutreja, tell us what has changed and what has not, in rural India, between the first and second waves?

Poonam Muttreja: The one big difference between the first and the second wave is, we responded [in the first wave]. Even though we weren't prepared, we took time to prepare and we declared a lockdown--unfortunately within four hours and that created its own problems. We were all made to feel we needed to change our behaviours, we needed to practice social distancing and laws were put in place as well as curfews and so on.

The big difference this time is that we are neither prepared nor do I get the impression that our government is serious about preparing for either the second wave or a third wave.

The other big difference is that young people are being impacted--they are 70% of India's population. And they are moving--migrants are mainly young people going back to their villages and taking the infection with them, so it has reached the villages. We kept asking last time: Will it reach the villages? And we were just very lucky that it didn't then, but now it has.

The third big difference is that for the first time, [during the first wave], our political leadership actually led the country into believing that we need to change our social behaviours--apart from the "thali bajao"--that COVID-19 required. These [protocols] were spread by a leader in India whom people listened to, we have to admit that. Now we have the same political leadership doing rallies and allowing religious events like the big Kumbh Mela. So people in India who have seen these images on television, mainly rural, do not believe that there is a second wave or that there is a need to practise [COVID-appropriate behaviour].

Finally, our frontline health workers, especially the ASHAs, who were put into action, had the energy and enthusiasm to do it, but we let them down by not giving them any protection. So, many of them got COVID-19 or other health issues. They are demoralised, discouraged, sick and scared because they know what the second wave is. What we are hearing from the field in rural areas is that we have not developed any infrastructure to deal with any aspect of COVID.

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IndiaSpend.com, 14 May, 2021, https://www.indiaspend.com/indiaspend-interviews/to-tackle-covid-in-rural-india-enable-at-home-care-involve-panchayats-ngos-748515


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