The Covid-19 disaster in India is especially bad in rural areas and particularly among mothers who can't provide enough milk for their babies due to lack of food, reports Dillip Pattanaik, executive director of the Orissa State Volunteers and Social Workers Association and a friend of The Rural Blog. He writes, using the more recent English rendering of the Odia language name:
"My state Odisha has also marked an average of 12,000 positive cases and average 20 deaths per day officially (non-officially it is more). This is really scary. . . . Due to nationwide lockdown, India has witnessed collapsing jobs, businesses, migrants’ waves of migrants returning to their states without any hope for more than a year by now. Rural villages are crowded with returning migrants. Due to continuous lockdown, shutdown, curfew, farmers and tribals couldn't go to forests to collect minor forest produce as well as to farm land for farming. Whatever left with them has been finished long back. The women (particularly lactic) and children from the rural poor are lacking their minimum need for daily food intake and so on. The situation is so horrible. . . .
"We have started some initiatives like awareness campaigns on social distancing, hand washing and busy in supporting the government for vaccination in remote villages. Along with this we have started a campaign, Nutritional Kit for Pregnant Women, Lactic Mother and Children, to ensure food security and support pregnant women and lactic mothers to fight hunger along with Covid-19. We are raising funds to provide 1,000 such kits to the poorest of the poor women, which would cost about $30,000 USD. You can donate on our online donation link : https://milaap.org/fundraisers/support-to-feed-the-needy?co=true#. Besides this, we are currently trying to raise funds to set up a Covid wellness center (with at least 25 beds, oxygen available, Covid-related medicines provided) in a tribal, poor, remote area where people have no access to Covid hospitals. They can be treated and stay under isolation in this wellness center."
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