How India’s hospitals fall short, in photos
A pregnant woman waits for delivery at the primary health center in Borsul village, West Bengal. Primary health centers typically provide basic health care services as well as antenatal and postnatal care for women.
WEST BENGAL, India —Across the country, access to health care is still a challenge for many people. Most government-run primary health centers in rural areas lack good hygiene, infrastructure and the medical staff to provide first-rate treatment for patients. Such shortcomings result in the overcrowding of hospitals in urban areas. In cities like Calcutta, the bigger hospitals face such an overwhelmingly high number of patients that they have insufficient doctors and resources to provide good medical care.
I recently traveled to India to photograph and study the country’s health care system for a project supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This series of photographs shows the every day conditions of India’s hospitals. As part of this project I visited hospitals in the states of West Bengal, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, focusing on infant mortality, government-run insurance schemes and the denial of treatment for HIV patients.
You can read more about my project on the Pulitzer website.
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