In the past two weeks, Ranvir and his brother Suresh (names changed) made two trips to the municipal hospital closest to their home in cent...
In the past two weeks, Ranvir and his brother Suresh (names changed) made two trips to the municipal hospital closest to their home in central Mumbai, desperately hoping to get an appointment with Ranvir’s pulmonologist. Both times, they found a nearly empty outpatient department, a handful of hospital staff and no sign of the doctor.
“The staff had no idea when the doctor will be back. But if we don’t get an appointment, I am afraid my brother’s condition will get worse,” said Suresh, a cook at a small restaurant and the primary caregiver for 36-year-old Ranvir, who is living with both HIV and tuberculosis.
Ranvir takes a combination of four different drugs that help to fight his diseases, but at times they also trigger troubling side-effects. In mid-March, for instance, as Covid-19 began to spread across India, Ranvir developed a fungal infection around his genitalia in reaction to one of his TB medicines.
He needed immediate medication, but the novel coronavirus pandemic unexpectedly came in his way. Hospital OPDs began scaling down their daily operations at least a week before the central government announced a complete nationwide lockdown on March 24. Once the lockdown began, transport restrictions made it difficult for Ranvir to approach any other hospital...
