Association of Medical Doctors of ASIA, founded in 1984, Consultative Status with UN ECOSOC since 1995

Bodhgaya, Bihar in the eastern part of India is not particularly well-off. Most of the people in the central city area are working in the tourism industry or engaged in construction work as day labourers. It is not hard to imagine at all that their wages have been hard-hit by the current COVID-19 crisis.

At AMDA Peace Clinic (APC) in Bodhgaya, emergency food assistance is currently being planned to support the households with pregnant women in the locality.

Earlier on, APC, which resumed service on 8 June, held a phone survey targeting its registered expectant mothers to grasp how they were coping with life under the pandemic. What became evident was the fact that, because a lot of the households lost their incomes, they did not have enough money to buy food.

In response to this dire situation, the clinic is currently preparing to supply foodstuffs once a week to the families with APC registered perinatal mothers.
 

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The below are what the women have been faced with:

“I am a housewife of a family of seven. My husband was working at a construction site as a day labourer but he’s now barely making ends meet due to the novel coronavirus. Thanks to the ration card which the government issued, we do receive support which includes a monthly provision of rice and flour (14.5 kg each) plus a monthly subsidy of 500 Indian rupees. Still, we have to rely on our savings to make up for the loss, in addition to the grains we stored during the rainy season. When can we get back to our normal life? I’m still waiting for that. I simply do not know how we are able to make a living, if this situation continues. Sometimes we have no choice but to go to bed without having to eat. So, what we really need is food supplies and daily necessities. I doubt that we could expect to go back to the life before the pandemic.”

“We are a family of three, with our child, my husband and myself. My husband and I are not formally educated. I had been trained to become a cleaner when my first child was conceived, but I couldn’t get any job. The child was born preterm and could only live for a few months. My husband was working as a day labourer. But he doesn’t have any work now due to the COVID-19 crisis. To make matters worse, we are not entitled to the governmental support since we do not have the ration card. Sometimes my husband gets a call for a day job, and when that happens, we can get some money to buy food. Our neighbours also give us stuff to eat as well. There are days where my husband and I just give our food to our child, thus two of us having nothing to eat for the day. It’s more worrying for us now to die from hunger than getting infected.”