Srinagar (India) (AFP)

Sanaullah Dar was going to be undergoing emergency surgery to remove a tumor in her bladder when India suddenly sealed off Indian Kashmir, cutting communications and restricting travel. Four months later, he was dead.

Because of the curfew, decreed in early August when the Indian government revoked the autonomy status of this region, the scene of a separatist insurrection, the family of this resident of Kashmir could not organize his surgical operation in Bombay. Overnight, she found herself unable to contact the hospital, located 1,700 kilometers from their Himalayan valley.

When his relatives finally managed to bring him to a hospital in Delhi in late October, it was already too late. The patient died a week after returning home.

"The breakdown in communications was a big problem, because of which we could not get him adequate treatment in time," said his nephew Sajjad.

Omar, a Kashmiri oncologist who cared for this patient and wished to be identified only by his first name, believes that the surgical operation "probably could have saved" Sanaullah Dar if it had been performed in time.

The latter is not the only patient to die in Kashmir because of the impossibility of access to care, says the doctor to AFP, indicating to have heard other colleagues accounts of death of patients due to the imposed confinement by the Indian authorities.

After months of draconian restrictions designed to avoid an uprising in this predominantly Muslim region, New Delhi has gradually relaxed the measures put in place on the occasion of this controversial dismissal decided by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi.

Mobile phone networks have been restored and travel bans have been relaxed. Internet access was partially restored in late January, but users can only access a reduced list of government-approved sites.

- Obtain medication -

Despite this, life remains complicated for doctors and patients.

Mobile data is still limited to 2G and the connection is extremely slow, preventing remote consultations normally very popular. Social networks and messaging apps remain blocked.

Omar is a member of a WhatsApp group of international cardiologists who has detected 1,600 cardiac anomalies in patients in Kashmir during the eighteen months preceding the August curfew, by sharing and analyzing more than 50,000 electrocardiograms. urgent.

"I no longer have access to anything of importance," he explains, finding himself unable to follow the latest advances in his science and to interact with colleagues around the world. "The key to health is to be up to date," he says.

In hospitals and universities, only administrative staff have access to broadband, preventing doctors from doing research on the internet to diagnose and treat their patients.

Patients with chronic or serious illnesses also face difficulties in obtaining vital medicines.

Abdul Rahim Langoo, owner of a houseboat in Srinagar, struck by a rare form of cancer, believed he was going to die when the line with his drug supplier in New Delhi was cut in August. Even since communications were restored, this 57-year-old Kashmiri struggled to send his prescription over the internet, a document necessary to place the order.

With the sharp drop in tourist traffic since the summer, his turnover has plummeted and he cannot afford a flight to the capital, 650 kilometers from his home.

"I am in tourism and since August there is no tourism, we have no income," he told AFP, sitting in his delicately decorated but hopelessly empty boat on a lake. Srinagar.

"I find it hard to make ends meet so that I can buy this drug every month," he says.

© 2020 AFP