A kilometre from AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital, a temporary shelter home with 60 beds, coolers, and fans inside a community hall in Green Park remains scarcely occupied.

Outside the hospitals, meanwhile, many continue to spend nights on footpaths under the open sky, battling the heatwave with hand fans and thin bedsheets, with several unaware that such shelters exist nearby and others deterred by the cost of commuting to and from them.

On the night of May 21, there was not a single inmate at the shelter home.

Over the next two days, as shelter home caretakers carried out awareness drives near the hospitals, patients and attendants slowly began trickling in. By the weekend, eight people had checked into the Green Park shelter home.

Tulsi Kumari, 22, who travelled to Delhi from Darbhanga in Bihar for treatment for her five-month-old infant’s congenital heart defect, said the rising temperatures were worsening their condition.

Accompanied by her three-year-old child and infant, she sleeps on a bedsheet near Gate 1 of AIIMS, outside a row of medicine shops.

“We do not know of any such facility. The shopkeepers keep shooing us away… on top of that, the baby is getting sicker in the heat,” she said.

Another group of patients and attendants seated outside the hospital gate said they too were unaware of any such facilities. Dhanno, 45, from Kashipur in Uttarakhand, said they remained outside the hospital overnight to queue early for appointments. “The heat is becoming a serious problem,” she said.

Commute and cost

Kamal, caretaker of the temporary shelter home in Green Park, said many patients and attendants considered the shelters too far away and lacked affordable transport options.

One of the residents currently staying at the shelter is Birender Yadav, who said he learnt about the facility from the caretakers.

“It is convenient to stay here, and the sleeping conditions are good,” he said. The only difficulty, he added, was the commute between the hospital and the shelter home. “It is a bit far, and travelling by auto costs around ₹70-80. That is why we have been walking back and forth instead,” he said.

A senior Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) official said temporary shelter homes had been set up in schools and community halls near AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, and Lady Hardinge Medical College as part of the board’s summer action plan this year. At least 750 people can be accommodated across 13 shelter homes, the official added.

Posters put up

Kamal said posters informing people about the shelters were put up at AIIMS last week. The posters read: “Garmi ko haraye, surakshit rahe. DUSIB aapke raahat mein saath (Beat the heat, stay safe. DUSIB is with you).”

Members of the Society for Promotion of Youth & Masses, an NGO that manages several DUSIB shelter homes across the city, said they were working with the board to spread awareness about the facilities.as she uses her hand fan.