India COVID crisis: ‘We tried 15 hospitals before my mother died’

Despite having the money to pay for treatment, one family struggled to find a hospital bed for their 61-year-old mother who lost her life to the virus.

New Delhi, India – Unlike millions of Indians who are struggling for money to get treatment for the deadly coronavirus, Savita Oberoi was neither poor nor helpless. Even so, her upper-middle-class family could not save her. They were unable to find a hospital bed or oxygen in time, and the 61-year-old lost her life to COVID-19 on April 12. “We knocked on the doors of at least 15 hospitals, tapped all our networks and contacts to organise treatment for my mother,” says Oberoi’s daughter, Vandana Paliwal, 38, a schoolteacher in West Delhi. “We finally got a bed for mummy after days of trying – that, too, through a contact who knew the hospital management.”