Nearly 140,000 people in India died in road accidents last year. Several communicable diseases together do not take such a huge toll on human life. But the country does not see road safety as a health crisis, writes Kundan Pandey Research inputs: Anumita Roychowdhury, Priyanka Chandola, Vivek Chattopadhyay, Ruchita Bansal Kailash Jha, 46, a resident of Purnia in Bihar, has been immobile for almost six months now.

In February, while returning home from a pilgrimage to Deoghar in Jharkhand, a truck hit the vehicle he was travelling in. When Jha regained consciousness two days later, he realised a spinal cord injury had left him bed-ridden.The harrowing months since then have taken Jha to hospitals in Purnia, Patna, Siliguri and finally, Delhi. Doctors at Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre in New Delhi have placed a steel rod in his back. For more than 15 days, the trauma centre’s guest room has become the new home for Jha, his wife and two sons.

The family has already borrowed Rs 4 lakh for the treatment and is set to fall into a debt trap. Jha’s younger son Roshan could not take his class XII board exams. Ashutosh, his elder son, had to drop out of his second year of graduation. “Doctors have left my father’s recovery upon god. I do not know how we will survive,” says Ashutosh.

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