Declare health emergency in UP: Congress

The Congress on Friday demanded that a health emergency be declared in Uttar Pradesh, claiming that medicines are being sold on black market with coronavirus patients dying for want of treatment.Patients are dying for want of beds and oxygen.

The Congress on Friday demanded that a health emergency be declared in Uttar Pradesh, claiming that medicines are being sold on black market with coronavirus patients dying for want of treatment.

''Patients are dying for want of beds and oxygen. Black marketing of Remdesivir is on and families of patients are crying. The number of deaths is rising and the government is still not serious,'' said UP Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu in a statement.

The Yogi Adityanath-led government has failed to provide treatment to COVID patients, he said.

''The health services have collapsed. The condition is so bad that there is a need to announce state health emergency,'' Lallu said, alleging that black-marketing of medicines and oxygen is not possible without the ''patronage'' of the government.

''The CM had ordered to convert 96 private hospitals into COVID centres but these could not work due to a lack of oxygen,'' he said.