145;Please send doctors here146;

Tribal villages, it seems, do not figure in the government8217;s already belated response to the chikungunya outbreak. This was apparent when The Indian Express visited Isra, a small tribal village in Madhya Pradesh8217;s Guna district.

Tribal villages, it seems, do not figure in the government8217;s already belated response to the chikungunya outbreak. This was apparent when The Indian Express visited Isra, a small tribal village in Madhya Pradesh8217;s Guna district. Even though almost every family in the village is suspected to have at least one member suffering from chikungunya, the government has not yet bothered to dispatch any assistance, medical or otherwise, for the tribals.

We meet chikungunya patients 8212; a young tribal couple with their two-month-old twins 8212; right at the narrow dirt track leading to Isri from the Agra-Bombay National Highway. The visibly anguished father, Amar Singh, says: 8220;My twins have been running a fever for close to a month now. We do not know what to do. There is no medical aid available at the village so we have to hitchhike to Badarwas where doctors at private clinics might help. The government hospital is useless and the clinics overcharge. We have already spent Rs 3,000 on our children8217;s treatment but to no avail. What do we do now?8221;

The situation is so bad in Isri that the moment we enter the village, tribals mob us asking if we have medicines. 8220;Has the government sent you? Our families are all down with fever, please give us some medicines,8221; pleads Makandi with folded hands. 8220;My three children have high fever, their joints are swollen and they can hardly walk. Please tell the government to send someone to help us,8221; he adds.

Seventy-year-old Maithu, also suffering from chikungunya, says the village last received medicines from the government three months back. 8220;The fever had barely started then. Today, every one of the 300 people in Isri are suffering from fever. The fever refuses to go for days and leaves one so weak that one cannot work for nearly 20 days. Most of us are labourers and farmers. How do we eat, feed our children or get them treated at private clinics in the city,8221; asks Maithu.

The tribals say their village has not been fogged or sprayed with anti-repellents for over a month. 8220;No one has told us what to do to keep away mosquitoes. No one bothers about us tribals,8221; complains Moharsi.

The situation is just as bad at the tribal village of Gugubara in Kolaras even though it is just two kilometers from Kolaras Hospital. 8220;The Anganwadi workers sometime come to give us medicines, but no doctor or nurse has come here. All 400 families in Gugubara and neighboring Gopalpura are reeling under the fever. No one comes to spray chemicals there either,8221; says Raju Adivasi whose six-year-old son Devender has been down with fever for six days now.

8220;We have heard the fever is getting worse in other places. Please tell the government to send doctors here. Our children are in so much pain. What if the fever doesn8217;t stop?8221; says Bare Lal, still down with fever.

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A question that no one answers at the Kolaras hospital. 8220;The fever is down now. We still cannot say it is chikungunya though symptoms are similar. There is no mortality in this and medicines are available. We are doing rounds of all villages8221;, asserted Dr HB Sharma, medical officer at Kolaras hospital.