V: A critical stock-taking of health services for the adivasis in western Odisha at the time of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

By the end of March 2021, 10 districts of western Odisha, bordering Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, were badly hit by the second wave of COVID-19. Stock-taking of the public health infrastructure in the adivasi pockets of Odisha is pivotal as the state is duty-bound to improve public health. The NGOs fighting for rights of adivasis find it contradictory that Odisha state boasts of exporting oxygen from western Odisha to 10 other states while maintaining the position that it has surplus oxygen, whereas on the ground, commoners in the hospitals were dying due to a lack of oxygen. The silent deaths of adivasis are not due to the deadliness of the virus but a consequence of systemic neglect by the state. If poverty and low standards of living imperilled their lives slowly, lack of public provisioning of COVID-19 treatment triggered mass deaths, did not find media coverage, and officially these are not esven counted as ‘data’ to be mourned.