NEW DELHI: There is an old saying in India, Jaan hai tho Jahan hai, meaning if there is life, there is will be the world. It also means when it comes to matters of health, Indians are generally conscious and concerned about their wellbeing. We would have presumed (not just by what our Prime Minister Modi boasted off recently about ending COVID-19 infections effectively) that the urban Indian living in cities has easy access to medical help, however, what we have witnessed in the past two months or more, even in megacities like Mumbai and Delhi, there has been immense trouble getting a bed in hospital, ICU's, ventilators, oxygen, medicines etc., due to an acute shortage, that myth is shattered not just broken.

Now for a moment consider what would the state of those living in rural areas. While I have worked and lived in cities like Mumbai and Delhi my roots are firmly grounded in my village Basnahi in Saharsa district of eastern Bihar, and I am in touch with several journalists from around the state. And I can tell you as far as the medical and health facilities are concerned it's a living hell, they themselves are sick.  

There are far too many instances and cases that can be written down in a report, so it should suffice to say the entire rural health infrastructure in Bihar is virtually non-existent. As it is in normal life people somehow managed with traditional medicines etc, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced them to seek medical help from doctors.

While most of the district headquarters have health centres and hospital facilities, for people who bring their near and dear ones burning with fever coming from as far as 30 to 50 kilometres pay exorbitant amounts to ambulances or private car or even a bullock cart, although almost certainly suspected coronavirus patients, they are turned away. There is simply no space, let alone medicines or oxygen. 

Inside these health centres & hospitals, the scene is also not less than a nightmare. Patients are crowded like a market, taking every bit of space in corridors and passages. On some beds, you can see more than two patients some with IV lines on their arms, some with oxygen masks, (although there is no guarantee of oxygen supply) relatives are fanning them because there is no fan, some of the walls are falling apart. It is impossible to differentiate between patients, relatives and medical staff, once in a while you can see a doctor with a white apron rushing towards a makeshift ICU.

So why do the villagers have to come to district headquarters health centres, milder cases could have been treated at the village level itself? Yes, that should have been the ideal case, but this could happen if there was even a basic health facility available in villages. 

As I am writing this piece I can see India Today is covering a rural hospital in Purnia which was built at a cost of around 65 lakhs but is currently being used as a cowshed and a dump.  

People from around the country must be surprised, but let me tell you, while there are hundreds of stories of how the collapsed rural health care in Bihar is defunct, I can tell you about my village. For name's sake, there is one small hospital in my village Basnahi. 

This hospital itself is terribly sick with no bed, no medicine, no doctor, no nurse, not even a compounder to give the injection. Basically there is not even one patient as the hospital has been unmanned for almost 20 years.

After India attained freedom, the villagers under the idealistic leadership of its elected Mukhiya (headsman), Mukti Nath Jha, a freedom fighter, the first post-graduate Mukhiya in Bihar (incidentally my grandfather) donated land to set up this Primary Medical Centre. 

They also donated part of a huge land plot for a school and a  library. The only school is functional. Land for the library was sought to be acquired by the government to set up a police station. Somehow that couldn't materialise and the police station in the same name of Basnahi was shifted to a nearby village of Mahua.

The irony is it's the same hospital where even caesarian child delivery operation of the daughter of late 'Mukhiya Baba 'could be successfully conducted in its early stage of development. The government reportedly still spends substantial money for the salary of a doctor and paramedical staff attached to it although it's only 'on paper' some babu and some administration gang is splitting such defunct salaries of hundreds of such defunct hospitals among them. This team most certainly include the local politician up to the member of parliament. 

The present Mukhiya of Baith Musahari panchayat (under which the Village is now clubbed), Ram Lagan Yadav recently recorded in a video his support to the idea of yours truly to hand over this structure to a committee of the villagers by the government to ensure the hospital doesn't die. But till that happens the sick of the village will either be forced to quarantine themself in farms and open grounds, treat themselves with concoctions made of neem and other herbs. And if luck does not support them they are condemned to die. Just like the hospitals in rural Bihar are dying.