9 year-old Geetenjali finds the lockdown and the talk of a dangerous disease confusing and incredibly scary.
With its mountain air, rural setting, and with the jungles of the Himalayan foothills in clear view for the first time in memory, Kotdwara locals of all ages are asking big and important questions.
Are we any safer in Kotdwara than in the crowded big cities?
Surely, it’s better here than in the densely overcrowded metropolis of Delhi of 19 million people which is a day’s drive away?
This too is a question the Project Help Team have been considering as the spread of COVID-19 takes its ever ugly and ever firmer grip on the nation of India. And we are also asking;
How is it, that a small school slum-community project has become regarded as an essential part of a major localised COVID-19 pandemic front-line response operation?
If this situation gets worse, as we believe it will, what will be our strategy and do we have the necessary funds and resources to respond to the urgent needs that we see around us?
The questions the kids are asking
For 9 year-old Geetenjali, one of beautiful students at our Disability Centre in the slums, she finds the lockdown and the talk of a dangerous disease confusing and incredibly scary. Why can’t I go to my new school anymore? Where are my new found friends? Why does my teacher now come to my house? Why are there barricades around our slum? Why is daddy at home more and why is he cranky? Why is mummy worrying?
Life is already challenging enough for Geetenjali due to her cognitive disability and the paralysis that has numbed half of her body since birth.
A father’s questions
When you live in poverty, there is so much to be scared about. Geetanjali’s father Mr Hari Shankar, is a daily wage labourer, meaning that he only gets paid on a day to day basis. He fronts up at the marketplace early each morning at 8am waiting for the work he needs to feed his wife and 4 children. These days there is no access to work, because the slum and surrounding areas have been physically barricaded. There are police patrolling the street corners and every exit out of the slum. All of the daily wage workers, the men and women who are domestic workers, rickshaw pullers, auto-rickshaw drivers, the door to door sellers, even the beggars on the main roads, are suffering. Mr Hari Shankar is asking; When can i get back to work? How can I feed my family and who can help me?
You can watch this video, to see men like Hari collect food for his family from the Project Help team. One of our team members wrote…
“But they knew they had someone always for them and that is Project Help, so they called us and asked for some help if we could do anything for them. After getting the message, Mr. Amit Samuel (Founder President Project Help) immediately send his team to the area with food supplies. The team then met with the family members along with police officers and with maintaining social distancing we provided the essential food supplies to the families in need.”
Mr Hari Shankar thanks the Project Help India staff for the relief food packages that he collects from them at the barricades every couple of days.
For Geentenjali, even with the relief packages, she is still hungry. However, she is being provided with lessons and activities by her Project Help teacher which keep her distracted from the constant grumbling of her tummy. She is a talented artist who has discovered new skills and passions since recently starting school at our Centre for the first time in her life. Geetanjali thanks her teacher for learning to draw and make crafts for these have become the greatest joys of her life. (And we are grateful for the donations from Australia that have paid for the stationery, craft resources and teacher’s salary).
So, is it safer in Kotdwara?
Yes, it is somewhat safer because there is less crowding, however, COVID-19 is spreading to the most remote regions of India. We understand that places like Kotdwara, and the remotest of towns and villages even further beyond, are becoming forgotten places of poverty and COVID-19 related suffering. India’s positive cases are reaching 3 million with 60 000+ deaths, and there are growing fears that the virus’s impact on remote village, rural and slum communities could be devastating. The country seems to be entering a dangerous new phase of rising infections in small towns and villages, and the government is underestimating the pandemic and allegedly trying to hide the data.
This is why our work is so important and why children like Geetenjali, and her family needs your urgent help.
Six months ago, before COVID-19 our funds were essentially used to educate 280 kids by providing them with a school and an education. Now things have been taken to a whole new level, with our love and care not only reaching our students but extending to their families as we save many from malnutrition and giving them the dignity and support they need to get through these very uncertain and worrying times.
India’s Invisible Catastrophe
A quote from ‘The Guardian’ 17th August
‘They will be allowed to die’
Some 600 million Indians live in in rural areas, and fears are rising that they could be overwhelmed by an invisible catastrophe, where many will die without testing or treatment. Data from the National Family Health Survey-4 showed that only about 25% of rural Indians have access to public outpatient (OPD) healthcare..
There are also grave concerns for around 70% of India’s elderly population, who live in villages. Co-morbidities abound and are often left untreated because medical services are far away.
India’s top epidemiologist Jayaprakash Muliyil, who believes up to half of India’s population (670 million people) will get the virus, says that most people with co-morbidities in rural India fail to get treatment.
“This group, and the elderly, are more prone to getting the virus. With limited resources, their families will not rush an elderly person to hospital if they have a fever,” said Muliyil. “They will be allowed to die. That is the reality in rural India where life expectancy is 65.”
Since the deaths will be spread out across huge geographical districts, some as big as 10,000 sq km (London is 1,572 sq km), Muliyil says the real scale of the human tragedy will only emerge much later, if at all.
Virus stigma
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that daily wage labourers will not reveal their symptoms for fear of separation from their families, the stigma, and losing their wages by being quarantined.
“People in the rural areas are hiding their symptoms and are not coming forward to get tested even when the testing van is reaching the village,” said Dr Ravindra Sharma, a senior medical officer in Lakhmipur Kheri district, in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, which neighbours Uttarakhand.
As we find the answers to so many big and important questions, what we do know is that you are an answer and an integral part of the ongoing solution. Thank you for your help.
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