A swollen stream which cut off contacts with outside world for a small hamlet in Tandur mandal of Vikarabad district cost the life of a 11-year-old girl suffering from fever as her treatment was delayed by several hours.
With no other road communication left for the habitation, the girl's father Harijan Balappa and his wife Amrutamma carried Harika on their shoulders by turns walking three kilometers over a railway track to reach a motorable road where they hired an autorickshaw up to the government hospital at Tandur on Friday evening. The doctors at the hospital advised Amrutamma who was left alone as her husband had returned for work to rush the girl to the government owned Niloufer Children's Hospital in Hyderabad.
Balappa told The Hindu that Amrutamma with the help of her brothers at Tandur pooled money to hire an ambulance but to their shock the Tandur-Hyderabad highway was breached at two places en route. The driver took the vehicle on a different route via Parigi which took 15 kms more to reach Hyderabad late in the night.
It was too late by the time the doctors at Niloufer commenced treatment on Harika, a student of Class six at a government upper primary school, as she developed complications and breathed her last around 2 a.m. on Saturday. Amrutamma and her brothers headed for the village with the body without even collecting the medical reports. Their return journey was on a tractor that slowly waded through knee high water and slush on a different route for a few kilometres up to the village. The journey was risky as the tractor was vulnerable to getting stuck in the slush, according to Balappa.
Village sarpanch Devari Narender Reddy said the stream near the habitation was overflowing cutting off the habitation for nearly 10 days in the latest rains. He said the gram panchayat had requested the government to sanction a bridge across the stream but it did not materialise so far.
