DEHRADUN: A 28-year-old woman from a hill village of Uttarakhand braved much more than the labour pains she was going through before she got to carry the little bundle of life in her arms.
Leela Joshi had to be carried by her family through uneven terrain for six hours in a make-shift doli (palanquin) to cover the 17km trek to the primary health centre, Panuanaula, in Almora in the wee hours of Sunday.
Leela, resident of village Thikalna, gave birth to a baby boy.
She went into labour on Saturday night. Her husband, Neeraj, tried to arrange a vehicle, but when his efforts failed, he decided to carry her with the help of other family members in a doli.
The nearest motorable road is 6 km from their home, but no driver was willing to drive due to fear of landslides and bad state of roads.
The family had to travel through the hilly region inhabited by wild animals to reach the medical facility.
Reacting over this incident, Congress MLA of the area, Manoj Tiwari, blamed the BJP government for putting on hold the schemes cleared during their rule.
Tiwari said, “How pathetic it is that a family has to carry a pregnant woman in a palanquin for delivery. This reflects the ground reality of the state government’s callousness and fake claims in the field of health system.”
While a motorable road has been built with MLA funds and donations by villagers, it remains untarred and becomes useless every monsoon.