5-Year-Old Heart Patient Waits Out In The Delhi Cold

New Delhi: As the temperature continues to drop in Delhi, survival becomes an increasingly uphill task for those who live on the streets of the sprawling metropolis. Even more so for the family of five-year-old Rajiv, who is awaiting surgery to mend a hole in his heart.

Rajiv's family, which hails from Madhubani in Bihar, has been trying to get an appointment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for the last three months. Added to this is the battle with Delhi's winter, as they spend endless nights out on the cold streets outside AIIMS.

Raghubansh Rai, Rajiv's father, works at a kirana shop, and has had to leave his three other elder children behind to come to Delhi with his wife and his youngest child, because doctors in his hometown could help no further with Rajiv's condition.

"We have been trying to get an appointment. But the hospital keeps giving us a date for next week. We have been here for three months and sleep out in the cold," says Raghubansh. They brought some shawls with them but say that is not going to save them in these temperatures outside.

There are lots more like Rajiv's father who are sleeping on the sidewalks of Delhi where homeless people spend their nights on the side of the roads battling the falling temperatures in Delhi. Winter has just begun in Delhi but most people sleeping on the sidewalks neither have enough blankets nor tents as they fight the bitter winter ahead.

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They and many more families of patients are camped outside AIIMS, near the gates of the swanky Metro station. Uday Foundation, which works on shelters for the homeless, says makeshift tents should be built across the city for the period of Delhi's winter. It would cost Rs 2 lakh to build tents that can accommodate one hundred people, and can be dismantled and used again, a practice followed during kavads, when tents are put up at regular intervals for pilgrims.