Badki Devi at the Unchadih Primary healthcare center with pharmacist HR Singh.
HR Singh sees 50 patients a day. The health centre or rural hospital that he runs in a village in Uttar Pradesh's Chitrakoot district serves 20 villages within 10 km as their only medical facility. Mr Singh is no doctor, he is a pharmacist, but in the absence of a doctor he hands out basic medicines for common illnesses like fever and cold.
For the next two days he will not even be able to do that. Mr Singh has been called up for election duty, which means that he will have to travel to Karvi, about 12 km from Chitrakoot. The Unchadih Primary healthcare centre, which should have at least six staffers including one doctor, will remain closed because its only staff member Mr Singh will be away.
"I won't be able to put you on a drip because I have to go on election duty," he informs 80-year-old Badki Devi, who has complained of fever, nausea and weakness. She will have to make do with a few pills that Mr Singh gives her in his chamber, a damp dark-blue room where the paint is peeling and six chairs make up the furniture.
Two stretchers lie unused, filled with cobwebs, outside the room. Mr Singh says there is no one to operate them - stretchers need at least two people to lift.
A few years ago, a new building came up in the compound with multiple rooms, but it was never used because there was no one but Mr Singh to set it up and run it. The building is locked and already crumbling.
12 km into the jungles of Manikpur, once overrun by dacoits, 30-year-old Susheela Devi of Giduraha village recounted how last August she gave birth to stillborn daughter. Floods have ravaged the village and the nearest government hospital where deliveries are performed, the Manikpur community healthcare centre, is 22 km away. The village church has only a basic dispensary. In this village of Kol Tribals, a Congress flag is flying at the village centre but there is no politician in sight. "I want to talk to the politicians about my ordeal but whenever they come I am working in the fields," said Susheela Devi.
About 30 km away at the Saraiya Public Health Centre, which caters to 50,000 people against the country-wide norm of 30,000, pharmacist Balraj Singh is the sole man on charge and says, "I wish they would post another doctor here, can you imagine what it is like to see 100 patients everyday," he said.
In a fact check conducted by NDTV, the only qualified doctor available in a stretch of 30-40 km was at Manikpur, nearly 40 km from Chitrakoot.
Government data from 2015 shows successive governments in UP have failed to provide the state's villages with basic healthcare. In Akhilesh Yadav's tenure as Chief Minister, UP spent Rs 488 per year on the healthcare of each citizen. In 2010, during Mayawati's tenure, the state spent about 370 rupees. The amount is much less than that spent by the other states - Himachal Pradesh reportedly spends Rs 1,800 per year on an individual's health.
The state's maternal mortality rate is 285, a marginal improvement from the 292 maternal deaths per 1 lakh live births in the Mayawati years, but much above the country average of 167. While the population rose steadily, the number of rural hospitals in UP came down by 8 per cent in the last 15 years.