Adivasis struggling to take back bodies of their kin to villages from city hospitals

Adilabad: The Adivasis and other poor sections living in interior and agency areas continue having a hard struggle to get medical treatment in time and also to take the bodies of their kin upon death at city hospitals back to their villages.

There is no vehicle for transportation and the medical department is often not providing the ambulance facility to them to shift the bodies back to the villages. Many such incidents occurred in the old Adilabad district, tribal leaders have said.

The ambulance staff would take the bodies to the nearest PHCs but would not drive all the way to the native places of the dead. There also exists a shortage of ambulances in the interior and agency areas of the district.

Tribals and the poor complain that some of the ambulance drivers and PHC doctors behave with them in an arrogant and inhuman manner and would often not respond positively when they sought help from them in emergencies.

Adivasis leaders have appealed to the government to allocate more ambulances to the PHCs in interior and agency areas to render services to them in emergencies.

A few local MLAs and ministers had donated some ambulances in their personal capacity to the government under the ‘Gift A Smile’ scheme; and these ambulances are of help to the poor.

Medical staff of PHCs say they were unable to provide ambulance services due to lack of sufficient funds to fill diesel.

The ‘Parthiva Vahanalu’ scheme introduced to shift bodies to native places or villages of the dead is not being very effective. Many 108 and 102 ambulances have become old and are frequently getting repaired. Some of them are defunct.

The villagers of Kunikasa in Gadiguda regretted that an ambulance driver 'dropped' the body of a pregnant adivasi woman, Madavi Rajubai, 23, at Gadiguda PHC after she died on the way while being shifted to RIMS, Adilabad on August 22.

The woman died when the ambulance reached Arjuni village. The staff took the body back upto Gadiguda PHC and downloaded it from the ambulance. The family struggled hard to take the body to their village.

Madavi Jangu, the husband of deceased Raju Bai, told DC that they had hired a private auto and shifted the body to their village Kunikasa, 20km from the Gadiguda mandal headquarters. Notably, the same ambulance had picked up the patient from the Kunikasa village a few hours before.

The incident of an adivasi father carrying the body of his 12-year- old boy on his shoulders and walking on the main road to his native village Vadgam in Indravelli mandal after the boy died of malaria while in treatment at a government hospital in Utnoor four years ago, is fresh in people’s memory. Vadgam village is 25km from Utnoor.

The father had no money to hire a private vehicle or an auto. The medical staff at Utnoor asked the parents of the deceased to take the body from the hospital without providing them a vehicle.

Some passers-by were shocked at seeing the father carrying the body of his son near Komaram Bheem Complex. They called up the ITDA Utnoor officials and arranged a vehicle to shift the body. The officials responded only after the father, encouraged by support from the onlookers, staged a Rasta Roko with the body of his deceased son.

Many such incidents took place but went unnoticed thereafter too. Ambulance drivers and doctors of PHCs say they have to attend to emergencies and are busy taking patients to the RIMS and Utnoor and can’t engage much time with one patient.