August 25, 2020
It is pouring by the time my taxi reaches Oxford’s Gloucester Green bus station. I dash through the rain towards the Heathrow bay as the X90 coach pulls in. The driver gets down to smoke a cigarette and we talk, about COVID-19 obviously. He says he does not know of a single person who has died of this disease. “You only hear it on the news. Frankly, unless people start dropping dead on the street, I’m not believing it”.
A few hours later I am on an Air India repatriation flight to New Delhi, flying home for fieldwork. My study explores how global public health policy, scientific research and medical practice affect women’s health in India. Global health research is driven by statistical and empirical methodologies, typically sidelining people’s experiences of illness and care-seeking within health systems.
And while gender is widely recognised as a major factor when it comes to good health outcomes, the focus on women’s health is normally limited to reproductive function. This leads to a systematic marginalisation of health issues, such as menopause, uterine prolapse or cervical cancer – all of which lie beyond pregnancy and childbirth. So my work is driven by the need to understand how these issues effect the health of women in countries like India and how they experience the health systems which are supposed to be looking after them.
I break the government mandated quarantine two days after arrival. A little past 10:30pm my masi (aunt) calls, frantically informing me that she just found Nani (my grandmother) unconscious in her bedroom. She was alarmed by the thud of Nani’s walking stick and rushed to find her on the floor, next to her bed. Masi is unsure if she slipped or fainted. The neighbour’s son and my aunt somehow manage to carry Nani, 78, downstairs and take her to the hospital. By the time Mum and I reach Ram Manohar Lohia, a government hospital, it is midnight. We sprint past people standing, sitting, sleeping on the pavement and in the stairwell.
Everyone seems quiet. Mum rushes into the emergency room while I wait, watching stretcher after stretcher make its way in and out of the lifts. I read and re-read the Ministry of Health posters on coronavirus symptoms and safety guidelines. Everyone is wearing a mask; some are wearing two. The hospital is packed and social distancing is impossible. Someone brushes past me every other minute.
COVID-19 cases have been rising for months, creating exorbitant pressures on health personnel and infrastructure. In the middle of all this, lockdown restrictions were eased in June. Later in this week, India will witness over 78,000 new cases in 24 hours – then the highest single day increase in in the world.
Hours later I finally see Nani, inert on a gurney, being lifted into an ambulance. She has been transferred to Sir Ganga Ram hospital. After a standard admission test, Nani turns out to be COVID-19 positive. She is placed on ventilator support and spends the next 15 days in the COVID intensive care ward in complete isolation. The doctors diagnose her case as a cerebrovascular accident – a left hemisphere stroke that paralysed the right side of her body and compromised her ability to speak, swallow and breathe naturally.