Kedarnath, not poor health facilities, a poll issue in Uttarakhand

Priyanka’s labour pains started early and at night. With the Primary Health Centre 18 kilometres away at Dhoulchina, villagers put her on a ‘Doli’ and set off. But even before they could cover the distance, she had to deliver her child in a field in torchlight and in the midst of a steady drizzle. The 21-year old turned out to be lucky. Both she and her child survived. But reports of the death of the new-born child or the expectant mother is fairly common in Uttarakhand. With the main roads often several kilometres away and the primary health centres being sparse, there is little people can do. Reaching the health centre is no guarantee that the doctor would be there and the patient would get treated. Infant mortality in the state was 38 per thousand in 2018-19 and Uttarakhand was the only state where IMR was actually increasing. In 2015- 16, IMR in the state was 32 and even earlier it was 28. But poor health insfrastructure is unlikely to be an electoral issue in the state even this time as people elect a new legislature. Death of young children and young women is not an election issue.



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