COVID leaves Indians with mounting medical debt

Most Indians do not have health insurance and costs for COVID-19 treatment have them drowning in debt.

As coronavirus cases ravaged India this spring, Anil Sharma visited his 24-year-old son Saurav at a private hospital in northwest New Delhi every day for more than two months. In May, as India’s new COVID-19 cases broke global records to reach 400,000 a day, Saurav was put on a ventilator. The sight of the tube running into Saurav’s throat is seared in Sharma’s mind.