April was the cruellest month since the pandemic started for Zarir Udwadia, a doctor in Mumbai.

In an opinion article for the @FT, he says hospital admissions began to inch relentlessly higher and 'ward rounds are now scenes from Dante’s “Inferno”’ https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c

Desperate patients in Indian hospitals are struggling to breathe while their cries for help often fall 'on deaf ears as overworked medical staff struggle just to keep going'. Essential drugs and oxygen are out of stock and patients are dying without them https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c

Zarir Udwadia says that some patients have lost faith in hospitals and are stocking up on oxygen cylinders sold on the black market, where sellers take advantage of the situation and bump up the prices https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c

How did it all go so horribly wrong in three short months?

The physician says that 'religious sentiments, political machinations and nepotism often trump public health principles and common sense in India' https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c

India has one of the lowest public healthcare budgets globally, with the country’s system receiving only 1.26% of GDP.

The pandemic has exposed India’s weakest health links — badly equipped and understaffed public hospitals and chronic shortages of beds https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c

The vaccine saga, Zarir Udwadia says, 'has been a scandal all of its own'.

Instead of stockpiling the doses it would need, by March, India was supplying vaccines to 74 nations and exporting far more doses than it had used to inoculate its own citizens https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c

India is 'a country brought to its knees by a tiny virus barely 100 nanometres in diameter', says Zarir Udwadia, and ‘paying the price’ for its complacency.

Read the doctor's full piece here: https://www.ft.com/content/ad200d93-3247-409a-8afb-482234b4655c