Non-Covid Health Care under the Era of COVID-19: A Study from Rural Bengal

ABSTRACT

The current corona pandemic divided both the health care service infrastructure and patients into two categories Covid and non-Covid. Both in the health care system and research world, the COVID-19 cases are given utmost priority for all the right reasons. In this study we attempted to understand the challenges faced by the non-Covid patients, particularly from the poor communities, who suffer from multiple deprivations. This study is based on survey of 88 non-Covid patient households in Murshidabad, West Bengal carried out in June 2020. The results show that the majority of the non-Covid patients were not able to access public health care due to lockdown which, in turn, results in increasing out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on both medical and non-medical heads (like transportation). This OOPE aggravated the plight of the household more intensely when income of the household suffered severely due to the lockdown. To meet the household expenditure including OOPE households had to come under the clutch of money lenders mortgaging their small piece of agriculture land and gold-ornaments, and selling assets, and draining out their savings. Women from poor households tend to become ‘triple-deprived’ due to unequal sharing of poverty and with their meagre assets mortgaged. This piece of work may add to the insights to multi-dimensional deprivations of people during calamity like the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Indranil De, Soumyadip Chattopadhyay, Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan, and Kingshuk Sarkar;individual chapters, the contributors.