Meena Devi's son had cancer & died in a subway outside AIIMS last Friday. She couldn't take her son's body to their home in Banka in Bihar.

Turns out, my naani-ghar is just a few kms from her home. "When I go back, I'll visit your naani-ghar," she tells me in our local dialect.

Like Meena Devi & her son, many many AIIMS patients & their kin are living under a flyover, in subways, on footpath & outside metro station. Unlike other shelter homes, no fixed roof & two meals a day not guaranteed.

I write on their plight in @htTweets
https://bit.ly/3erbVm6 

Patients with cancer, severe liver ailments, many kids with holes in their hearts. Many of them. They either had appointment for surgeries, were admitted at AIIMS or had come in hope of receiving treatment at AIIMS.

They neither have shelter homes, nor the certainty of meals.

One young man with a bulging tummy due to severe liver problems had been prescribed milk, green vegetable, eggs & pulses. But when he does get a meal, it is mostly pooris - that he must not have. Many, many such patients putting up outside AIIMS. They need help.

The few shelter homes, dharamshalas & rain baseras outside AIIMS are house full. And they are not taking in new people, for fear of contamination. The patients and their kin stranded outside AIIMS are mostly from outstation & have nowhere to go. They need help. @ArvindKejriwal

These are the places where AIIMS patients and their kin are putting up during the lockdown. No shelter homes for them, no fixed meals either. They are mostly outstation people.