UP: FIR against villagers for complaining about lack of medical facilities

Residents of Uttar Pradesh’s Jewar village are treating Covid patients with makeshift arrangements of their own due to low availability of beds at the local hospital.

A video doing the rounds of social media show sick villagers camping under a neem tree in an open ground with glucose bottles hanging from its branches, hoping that the healing properties of the tree will alleviate their symptoms.

But their narrative of inadequate medical infrastructure is at odds with with district administration’s story.

After Yogesh Talan, former village pradhan, told the media that every other house is suffering from Covid symptoms and the local hospital is refusing patients, the Gautam Budh Nagar administration has booked him for disobedience of a public servant's order, spreading infection and under sections of the Epidemic Diseases Act.

An FIR has also been filed by Jewar's primary health care centre in-charge against 65-year-old Harveer Talan, a Covid patient who has been camping under the tree. Officials claim that Harveer voluntarily sought treatment from quacks and refused to get admitted at Covid care facilities.

Meanwhile, Yogesh Talan, the former sarpanch of the village, accused the district’s offensive as retribution for speaking out against the government. He said that the Harveer was offered a bed at a district hospital 70 km away and another at Sharda Hospital in Greater Noida that is 50 km away from the village.

Meanwhile, 100 oxygen concentrators as foreign aid from Switzerland reached Jewar on Tuesday. Dhirendra Singh, the BJP MLA from Jewar separately said he has procured 10 oxygen cylinders and 25 fowler beds from private players and has also allocated 50 lakh from his official local area development fund to set up a Covid care facility.