Coming down heavily on the Uttar Pradesh government for the dismal state of affairs of the health infrastructure in the state’s villages and small towns, the Allahabad High Court has stated that the medical facilities in these areas are ‘Ram Bharose‘ [Upto God].

A bench comprising of Justices Siddhartha Varma and Ajit Kumar took exception to the fact that in Meerut, dead body of one of the patients named Santosh Kumar who had collapsed in a hospital’s bathroom and died, was disposed of as unidentified body.

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“If this is the state of affairs of treatment at medical College in the city like Meerut then the entire medical system of the State pertaining to the smaller cities and villages can only be taken to be like a famous Hindi saying ‘Ram Bharose’,” the Court was quoted as saying.

The High Court suggested that every B and C grade town of Uttar Pradesh should be provided with at least 20 ambulances and every village be provided with at least 2 ambulances having ICU facilities within one month.

The court also pointed out the abysmally low number of community health centers (CHCs) in the state’s hinterland.

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“If we take the population of rural areas to be 32 lakhs (3.2 million) then since there are only 10 Community Health Centres, so one health centre has the load of 300,000 people and against 300,000 people it has only 30 beds,” it observed.

Meanwhile, on May 17, Uttar Pradesh reported 285 coronavirus deaths as 9,391 fresh cases surfaced, taking the state’s infection tally to 16,28,990, as per the government bulletin.