People from 10 nearby villages have been coming here for treatment.
Patients lying on the roadside and IV fluid bottles hanging from trees -- that's how treatment is happening in a rural area of Agar-Malwa district in Madhya Pradesh. With the locals afraid to go to government hospitals, unlicensed practitioners are treating patients in the most rudimentary fashion with no arrangement for drugs or even electricity.
In an orange farm, located 200 meters from the highway, the patients are seen lying on sheets and cardboard pallets. Bags of IV fluid are seen hanging from trees. There is no social distancing. No one is seen using a mask.
The horrifying video is from near village Dhaniyakhedi -- around 200 km from state capital Bhopal -- on the road leading from Susner to Pidawa Rajasthan. People from 10 nearby villages have been coming here for treatment.
Although no one was ready to speak in front of a camera, they told local reporters that they are afraid to go for treatment in government hospitals.
The patients, they said, will be admitted in the Covid ward, where many are dying.
"The government has time and again taken action against such quacks," said the Block Medical Officer, Manish Kuril. "We request everyone -- if you have a cold or cough, please go to a proper doctor and get tested for Covid, otherwise it can be too late," he added.
Chief medical and health officer (CMHO) Dr. Samandar Singh Malviya sent a team to the spot and said an FIR will be registered against the unlicensed practitioners.
However, when the team reached the spot, they did not find any patients or the unlicensed practitioners. The team found empty bottles of medicines.
"We got to know that the farm where this was happening belonged to the quack. Four FIRs have been lodged against the unlicensed practitioners duping patients earlier as well," the team said.
82 patients were infected with coronavirus in the last 24 hours in Agar Malwa where the number of active cases are 492.
On Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh logged 12,319 fresh cases of Covid, which took the tally of infections in the state to 6,24,985. There were 71 fatalities in the same period, taking the total number of deaths to 6,074, show figures from the state health department.