Visakhapatnam: Tribals lose healthcare link due to lockdown

VISAKHAPATNAM: Madrapu hamlet in Ananthagiri mandal is one such village which still doesn’t have access to roads. People of this hamlet depend on horses and mules to go from one place to another.

Medical

services are also short of requirement. Sources in the Ananthagiri mandal informed that the

lockdown

has dealt a severe blow to the village, inhabited by tribal groups, especially the Konds.

With auto-rickshaw and taxi services unavailable and ambulances being scarce, the villagers are having to carry their sick to primary health centres (PHCs) on horseback or sometimes even on ‘dolis’ (palanquins of rudimentary make). Situated between two hills, the village is 13kms away from the nearest road.

Tribal activist and CPI(M) leader K Govinda Rao said that there are at least four tuberculosis patients in the village whose access to PHCs has been cut off due to the lockdown. They are in immediate need of healthcare.” While the villagers have taken up laying the road themselves as a long-term solution, the need for this village is immediate.

While the state government is urging people to use telephonic medical services,

tribals

living in interior parts of the agency are feeling the pinch of restricted medical services. Sources say that there are around 700-800 villages that are cut off from major road networks in the Agency areas and are reeling under the shortage of healthcare workers.

Rama Gopal, president of Indigenous and Tribal People’s Convention— AP unit, said, “The situation is quite dire. We don’t have a regular ADMHO. This is the situation for almost a year now. With the focus being on Covid, regular health services have shrunk and sighting of ASHAs in interior villages has become a rarity.”

District administration sources however maintained that healthcare workers have not been diverted from Agency areas and care is being taken to ensure medical and ambulance services are not affected. BK Naik, Visakhapatnam district’s coordinator of hospitals said, “Going by the numbers, we have had over 1,280 deliveries and ambulance services have not been affected at all. However, OP numbers have come down due to the lockdown.”