As Delhi shivers in a cold, with temperatures dipping to 4.6 degrees Celsius, 27-year-old Yashodha Kumari from Palamu, Jharkhand, waits each night for the shops in Ansari Nagar to close so she can quietly set up her makeshift camp and find a place to sleep while her husband receives treatment at AIIMS.
“The nights are getting chillier, but I don’t have any other option,” said Ms. Kumari. She keeps her one-year-old daughter wrapped in blankets to protect her from the cold. Her husband is being treated for a throat tumour at AIIMS, and the family has been in Delhi for over a week.
She is not alone. Hundreds of patients and their families unfurl blankets outside the AIIMS metro station, sleeping beneath the open sky. Many have journeyed from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Bihar, seeking affordable or free medical care, but with no means to pay for a roof over their heads.
Their ordeal deepened when rain fell on Friday night, leaving their clothes and blankets drenched.
Across the street, the temporary night shelters run by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board are packed to capacity, as is AIIMS’s ‘Vishram Sadan’ dormitory, which was built for patients and their families.
