NEW DELHI: Virus-ravaged rural communities in India’s largest and most populated state had been left “at God’s mercy” due to the collapse of the health system.

Millions of lives in Uttar Pradesh were said to be at risk following a surge in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases with some villages reporting hundreds of deaths and new infections on a daily basis.

A lack of proper medical facilities has left remote parts of the state ill-equipped to deal with the crisis as the country battles another wave of COVID-19.

In a ruling on Monday, Allahabad high court described the situation in Uttar Pradesh as “grim.”

Judges had been sitting to preside over a petition demanding better care for COVID-19 patients in the Meerut district. Petitioners had slammed India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for “poor medical infrastructure and placing the lives of millions of people at the mercy of God.”

The court’s two-judge bench said: “If this is the state of affairs of treatment at a medical college in a city like Meerut, then the entire medical system of the state in the smaller cities and villages can only be taken to be at the mercy of God.”

Officials in Basi village, in Uttar Pradesh’s worst-affected district of Baghpat, have recorded 35 deaths out of a population of 7,000 in the last month.

“The situation is so grim that, in some houses, two or three deaths have taken place, wiping out the entire family,” Rajesh Nain, a social worker and village resident, told Arab News.

“In one house, both the father and son lost their lives in the space of two days, while in another, a middle-aged couple died in quick succession. It’s like the area has turned into a ghost village. No one comes out of the house; there is hardly any day when someone or other does not die,” he said.

On Tuesday, India logged more than 260,000 COVID-19 cases, a low figure compared to more than 400,000 last week, but the death rate remained high at in excess of 4,000 per day. Out of the national total, Uttar Pradesh reported 9,500 cases on Tuesday and 371 deaths.

However, experts and activists in rural areas disputed official figures, describing them as “under-reporting.”

BACKGROUND

Families reportedly ‘wiped out’ by COVID-19 as health system in parts of Uttar Pradesh collapses amid virus surge.

Basi’s former village leader, Satvir Pradhan, told Arab News: “The government is registering only those deaths which are happening in COVID-19 centers; they are ignoring villages where people are dying without oxygen, and hospital beds.

“There is no doctor, no medical centers, no testing. We asked the district administration to provide us with medical support, but despite assurances, no help has come,” he said.

The situation was reportedly similar in other parts of the state where more than 75 percent of its population of 200 million live in rural areas.

Devendra Dhammaa, a social activist and farmer from Basi’s neighboring village of Sankroub, told Arab News: “Villages in Uttar Pradesh are basically on their own as far as medical infrastructure is concerned.

“People have a fever; they take medicine supplied by local doctors who are mostly untrained, and then rest at home. If someone starts facing breathing problems, if he or she is lucky, they will find a doctor. Otherwise, they die,” he said.

Meanwhile, recent media reports said more than 2,000 bodies had been found “hastily buried or abandoned along the banks of Ganga (the Ganges)” in various districts of Uttar Pradesh.

In the Unnao district, a neighborhood of the state capital Lucknow, 900 bodies were recovered from riverbanks and similar instances were reported in districts including Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Ghazipur, Kannauj, and Ballia along the border with the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

Dr. Jagpal Singh Teotia, from Baghpat district, told Arab News: “What we are witnessing is an unprecedented horror and tragedy in the state. A huge part of the population has been left to fend for themselves with the government not providing any kind of support.

“An alertness on the part of the government and some focus on the health sector in the past one year could have saved many lives.”

Teotia, one of the few doctors in the area trained to treat COVID-19 patients, said several healthcare workers felt “helpless at the sight of tragedy” and blamed the government for “risking people’s lives.”

“When the government knew that the virus was spreading, what was the need to allow over 3 million people to gather at the Kumbh Mela (a large Hindu festival held in the northern Indian city of Haridwar)? What was the need to organize local body elections (in Uttar Pradesh last month) when the pandemic was at its peak?”

Arab News recently reported that more than 700 schoolteachers had died after participating in the local polls. A majority of the deaths took place in villages where medical facilities were non-existent.