This Article is From Jan 03, 2013

In Delhi's winter, boy battles cancer from pavement outside AIIMS

The homeless on a pavement near AIIMS.

New Delhi: At 8 am in the day, Chandan, 12, is sleeping with his father on a bitterly cold day outside Delhi's AIIMS hospital.

Chandan was diagnosed five months months ago with bone marrow cancer. His father accompanied him from their village in Bihar to Delhi. Treatment at AIIMS is heavily subsidised. But they have nowhere to live.

So now, in between appointments for chemotherapy at the hospital, the family sleeps on the pavement.

Chandan's father, Girish, originally tried to rent a room nearby for Rs 60 a day. But without any income, that soon became unaffordable.

Across the road from AIIMS, a government shelter has 400 beds for out-of-town and needy patients. But it's full, and the road outside is strewn with shivering, sick people who have nowhere else to go.

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