Mohsin and members of his Covid-19 ambulance driving team sit on a trash strewn patch of concrete outside a cremation ground on the banks of the Yamuna River in New Delhi.
The body of a Covid-19 victim is burned at a cremation ground in New Delhi. Relatives, friends, and frontline workers who attend these funerals often throw their personal protective equipment, or PPE, onto the pyre as they leave.
An ambulance parked at the entrance of a Covid-19 cremation ground in New Delhi. The driver’s protective robe is draped nonchalantly through the window.
A Covid-19 victim’s body is carried from an ambulance to a waiting pyre. Scarce resources and restrictions on funeral attendees mean ambulance drivers like Ansar (R) often help with proceedings, including handling, and placing the body.
Workers transport wood for pyres at a cremation ground in New Delhi.
Ambulance drivers carry wood to pyres at a cremation ground in New Delhi.
A family member touches the feet of a Covid-19 victim during a funeral at a cremation ground in New Delhi.
Ansar, an ambulance driver, on duty in New Delhi during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A body lies in wait in an ambulance outside a cremation ground in New Delhi. Ambulance drivers sometimes wait hours with bodies until the family and friends of victims show up to perform the last rites. They never leave Covid-19 bodies unattended.
A protective robe is draped across the driver’s seat of an ambulance ferrying Covid-19 bodies to cremation grounds and cemeteries across New Delhi.
Ansar and Mohsin, ambulance drivers, have lost count of how many patients they’ve ferried to hospitals, and the bodies they’ve transported to cremation grounds and cemeteries in New Delhi during the Covid-19 pandemic.
(L to R) Mohsin and his team of young ambulance drivers. He brought them together to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic in India the summer of 2020.
Discarded medical gloves rest life-like in a trash-filled gutter.
Ansar, an ambulance driver, describes wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) in New Delhi’s raging summer as “suffocating.”
