NEW DELHI: An Indian woman who sold her jewellery to pay for her husband’s care after a collision left him unconscious more than a month ago is prepared to sell her son to pay for the medical bills, a report said.
Harsh Sharma, whose husband’s car hit an express train at an unguarded railway crossing in northern Punjab state on Aug 28, said she could only raise $2,500 dollars by selling all her valuables.
“Now doctors say we need three-to-four hundred thousand rupees (8,000 to 10,000 dollars) more. I don’t have any other belongings to sell except for my five-year-old,” said Sharma, according to a Times of India report on Wednesday.
“I am ready to sell myself too.” There were no further details.
India has a public health system where care is available free of cost, but a scarcity of hospitals and doctors in the billion-plus country means that many patients turn to expensive private health centres and pay costs themselves.
The government announced a health insurance scheme this week for those who live on less than 30 cents a day.
The plan would allow them to get treatment worth $750 a year at participating hospitals.
With doctors at the private hospital where her husband Bhupinder was being treated saying it was unclear when they would be able to discharge him, her financial woes were only set to increase, the report said.
“The patient is improving but we can’t say how much time he would take to recover completely,” said Dr Ashwani Kumar Chaudhary. “It may take a month or much more than that.”—AFP
