Ahead of third wave, India's rural health centres depleted of drugs, staff

Healthcare centre in Maharashtra village shows what rural India could be facing ahead of new variants of the disease.

Farm worker Bildar Pavra has brought his daughter Neeti, 6, to the Telkhedi primary health centre (PHC) at Akrani in north Maharashtra's Nandurbar district to get an infected boil treated. She is running a mild fever, and he too needs to have his eyes checked.

However, the family has to return home, a half-hour walk away in Atharipada, disappointed. There are two doctors at the centre and neither is available. An attendant offers Neeti paracetamol to ease the fever though he is not qualified to medicate. Doctors are never available at the PHC, complains Pavra, and neither is its ambulance.