Summary:
Oxfam India launches Mission Sanjeevani to aid rural health infrastructure in worst-hit states of India, will also train 35,000 ASHA workers to fight Covid
.
The second wave has left public healthcare in shambles.
People have lost their lives due to lack of proper medical facilities and infrastructure.
The situation is getting a little under control in the cities, but it is still very grim in rural India where there are issues related to access to medical facilities, hospitals, doctors, technically trained staff or testing facilities.
Around 65% Indians out of the total population of approximately 1.3 billion live in rural India which hardly has rural health infrastructure.
As per the Rural Health Statistics 2019, there is a shortfall of 43,736 Sub Centres (23 percent), 8764 Primary Health Centres/PHC (28 percent) and 2865 Community Health Centres/CHC (37 percent) across the country.
Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar says: “There was a time when we woke up every day to news of death of a friend, family, acquaintance.
Villages were worse off - with no access to health care, no testing; in some cases, 20-25 people from a village died within a few days.
No one in India has remained untouched by this pandemic.