Chunni Deuja, 34, is lying on a bed with three other patients. Sometimes she wiggles uncomfortably in the tight space. Sometimes she moans aloud. Two needles peek out of a blood vessel near the wrist of her left hand. The needles, one to capture the impure blood and the other to return the blood after purifying it, are attached to the whirring dialysis machine next to the bed.Deuja has been suffering from kidney disease for the last three years. Both of her kidneys are damaged. She has been undergoing hemo-dialysis, a process which purifies blood with an artificial kidney for years.
Deuja visits Bir Hospital twice a week at a cost of 2500 rupees, or $35, per visit. “I’ll have to undergo this treatment until my death and now I feel it is better to die than continue this [dialysis],” she says from her hospital bed.
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