Unnao (India) (AFP)

The coronavirus is raging in the Indian countryside where the deceased are buried or sometimes abandoned in rivers, while the sick are treated with decoctions of plants for any medicine.

Kidwai Ahmad, from the village of Sadullahpur, in the huge state of Uttar Pradesh (north), describes the situation as "disastrous" in his district where death strikes from all sides.

"Surrounded by so much poverty, people cannot even afford decent cremations. So often, they ballast the bodies with large stones and throw them into the river," he told AFP by telephone.

"Others don't even bother and throw the bodies away as is. It has become a common practice here," he adds.

"(Others) just bury their dead in shallow graves and don't even bother to wait and see if the crows or dogs come to feed on them."

Last month, his village did not receive a visit from any medical team.

The sick remained at home to treat themselves with "decoctions of herbs", he said again.

If people can afford to go to clinics, they find on arrival that no beds are available, that oxygen and medicines are also lacking.

"We let people die," he continues.

"It is India that we hide from everyone".

- Pharmacy boy as doctor -

In recent days more than 100 corpses have washed up on the banks of the Ganges, suggesting that the situation is just as dire everywhere else.

Also in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, dozens of the dead were buried in barely dug sandy graves on the banks of the Hindu holy river.

Authorities deny wood shortages and the state government insists it is waging a "relentless and aggressive campaign to locate, test and treat patients with Covid."

But in the district of Bhadohi, Vinod Pandey, 45, an official, recovering after contracting the Covid, deplores the "mess" he has faced in dispensaries and other medical establishments.

His village sees the number of deaths increasing steadily.

"Everyone (...) seems to be sick," he comments.

Ajay Singh Yadav, 40, says that in his village the Covid-19 is treated "like a banal viral infection" and there again there are many more deaths than usual.

"There is no doctor available in the medical establishment and it is largely the employees of pharmacies who manage the disease in the villages," he told AFP, "People will describe their symptoms and the pharmacy boys give them medication based on what they deduce.

- "We live in fear" -

In neighboring Bihar, Guddu Khan had fever, cough and pain in his body and, for almost a week, was treated by a "jhola chhaap" ("amateur") doctor without any medical equipment. .

According to Arman Khan, his relative, "hundreds of people in dozens of neighboring villages with all symptoms of Covid are consulting (the charlatan)".

Indians in rural areas entrust their lives to hundreds of thousands of unaccredited, unqualified practitioners.

In the absence of screening in the region and poor diagnosis, Guddu Khan, in his forties, ended up in hospital where he is now in critical condition.

But according to Anant Bhan, senior researcher in public health and bioethics, in Bhopal, when medical teams go to villages, people are reluctant to be tested.

"We must intensify screening, conduct an information campaign and that communities cooperate with health personnel," advocates the researcher.

But in the meantime, the villager Umesh Yadav, in a trembling voice, confides to AFP: "We live in fear".

str-abh-bb-stu / lth / ia

© 2021 AFP