Night shelters packed, patients, kin brave the cold outside hospitals

As Delhi shivers in a cold, with temperatures dipping to 4.6 degrees Celsius, 27-year-old Yashodha Kumari from Palamu, Jharkhand, waits each night for the shops in Ansari Nagar to close so she can quietly set up her makeshift camp and find a place to sleep while her husband receives treatment at AIIMS.

“The nights are getting chillier, but I don’t have any other option,” said Ms. Kumari. She keeps her one-year-old daughter wrapped in blankets to protect her from the cold. Her husband is being treated for a throat tumour at AIIMS, and the family has been in Delhi for over a week.

She is not alone. Hundreds of patients and their families unfurl blankets outside the AIIMS metro station, sleeping beneath the open sky. Many have journeyed from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Bihar, seeking affordable or free medical care, but with no means to pay for a roof over their heads.

Their ordeal deepened when rain fell on Friday night, leaving their clothes and blankets drenched.

Across the street, the temporary night shelters run by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board are packed to capacity, as is AIIMS’s ‘Vishram Sadan’ dormitory, which was built for patients and their families.

NGO volunteers visited the area around metro stations and suggested a shelter home in Geeta Colony, over 15 kilometres from AIIMS, where a handful of beds are available.

Sunil, 25, from Gaya in Bihar, has a kidney-related illness.“I prefer to stay near the hospital for regular appointments and check-ups,” he said.

‘Over 7,000 on roads’

The Centre for Holistic Development (CHD), a non-profit in Delhi, has written to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda to request more makeshift tents and night shelters outside major hospitals in the city.

Sunil Kumar Aledia, executive director of CHD, wrote, “A grave humanitarian crisis is unfolding outside hospitals such as AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, and Lady Hardinge Medical College.”

Mr. Aledia said a team counted 7,882 people “compelled to sleep” outside hospitals in Delhi

He warned that these conditions expose people to hypothermia, respiratory illnesses, and a host of other health risks.

AIIMS officials said they have been encouraging patients to use the in-house shelters such as Vishram Sadan, which has 694 beds, and the ‘Ashray’ camp with 250 beds. However, a notice board outside Vishram Sadan on Friday night said the dormitories were full.