Guwahati, Assam, India – Gautam Sabar had been complaining of fever and headache for a week so on May 15, his son Gaurab Sabar took him to the in-house hospital at the Dimakuchi tea estate in northeast India’s Assam state.
There was no doctor to attend to him and the health assistant present at the facility prescribed him some medicine and let him go, Gaurab told Al Jazeera.
The next morning, as Gautam’s condition deteriorated, the son rushed him to the health facility again. This time the assistant put him in the tea garden’s ambulance and sent him to a government facility 20 kilometres (12 miles) away where he tested positive for COVID-19.