The Healing Touch In Troubled Times

How a hospital in rural Kashmir coped during the lockdown

- Gulzar Bhat

Battling ovarian cancer, 36-year-old Rubeena (name changed) was home after going through a series of chemotherapy sessions at a hospital in Srinagar. A few days later, on August 18 last year, Rubeena suddenly felt a searing pain and her family, amidst a total lockdown of the Kashmir Valley, made a desperate attempt to race her to the hospital from their idyllic village tucked away in thick apple orchards, some 14 km from Shopian town.

Traffic movement on streets, alleyways and thoroughfares of the Valley had become Herculean because of security restrictions following the bifurcation of the State into two federally controlled territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh — on August 5, 2019. Worse, most communication lines were cut off.

As her pain worsened, Rubeena’s family decided to take her to the Shadab Memorial Hospital (SMH), a facility run by the Shadab Memorial Trust, in Shopian town. There was no oncologist at the hospital but Srinagar with medical facilities was 50 km away. It was a rather desperate predicament for Rubeena, and patients like her.