Health a casualty in toxic Bet villages Impure water flowing from Budha Nullah has made area residents vulnerable to various diseases
Minna Zutshi
Tribune News Service
Minna Zutshi
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, September 9
Sixtyfive years after Independence, residents of Sidhwan Bet area have no potable water or easy access to health services. The highly toxic water flowing from the Budha Nullah have made the residents’ life vulnerable to life-threatening diseases.
Sixtyfive years after Independence, residents of Sidhwan Bet area have no potable water or easy access to health services. The highly toxic water flowing from the Budha Nullah have made the residents’ life vulnerable to life-threatening diseases.
At Harnam Singh’s house in Hujran village, an old woman greets us with a faint smile. She is a cancer survivor. It took her almost a year to get the disease diagnosed. Finally, she got treatment from a private hospital in Rajasthan. The disease has aged the woman prematurely. There’s no government dispensary in the village, says her husband. A young woman places two glasses of water on the table.
She insists that we drink the water at once lest it turns yellow. A woman visiting them complains of hepatitis. Another woman from the same village mistakes The Tribune reporter for a doctor. She hastens to narrate her medical history, observing that a medical practitioner in the village is a rarity.
Adjacent to this house is a government school where a girl, after having her midday meal, is gulping water drawn from a hand pump. Some boys are seen queuing up for tap water. We ask them whether any RO system has been installed at the school. “We’re told by a teacher that the school does have an RO system. The teachers drink treated water. We’re told that there’s a plan to dismantle the hand pump and to connect taps to the waterworks in the village,” says one of them.
Apart from the foundation stone at the schoolgate, three other stones announcing various developmental works catch one’s eye. At Bhaini Gujran, students at Government Primary School are drinking water from a hose pipe. The “RO system”, we are told, is out of order.
“As a social worker, it pains me to watch these students drink this foul water. The school does not have a connection to the village waterworks. We’re playing with our children’s health ,” says Kiranjit Kaur, an anganwadi worker at a centre on the school premises.
At Bhaini Araiyan village, a patriarch whose five family members are cancer patients, talks only of the polluted water that the villagers in the Bet area are forced to consume. “The poison flowing from the Budha Nullah is killing the residents,” he says. “No one from the Health Department has ever visited us,” he claims.
At Walipur Khurd, sarpanch Ranjit Kaur’s daughter-in-law Kulwinder says though they get the water from the waterworks, it turns yellowish if kept overnight in a container. The family has installed an RO system at home. The sarpanch, referring to some cases of hepatitis C and cancer, says in case of illness, the villagers have to go to Hambran for treatment though the nearest government dispensary is at Bhundri.
Ghamnewal village sarpanch Manjit Singh says there is a need to bore deeper for waterworks. At the far-end of Walipur Khurd village, four households near the bundh along the Sutlej complain about the water drawn from the recently installed hand pump. “If we keep the water unused for a few hours, it gets spoilt,” says Pal Kaur.
Social activist Sohan Singh Salempura says: “The Bet area is the backwaters of Punjab. The people here, instead of consulting medical experts, prefer to repose their faith in tantriks and quacks. Many villagers are unaware of the grave threat that the polluted water poses to their health. Lack of adequate healthcare services is turning desperate residents towards quacks and tantriks.”
OFFICIAL WORD
He claimed that the healthcare facilities were adequate. “In the recent past, we conducted 23 major surgeries. Sixty deliveries were conducted at the Community Health Centre (CHC) in Sidhwan Bet. Out of these surgeries, seven C-sections were done. Our daily OPD gets more than 150 patients. a round-the-clock emergency services are available at the CHC. Ambulance 108 are also available,” he said.
“The bed occupancy rate at the CHC is more than 100 per cent. We have adequate staff. There are 25 sub-centres and 16 subsidiary health centres in the Sidhwan Bet block,” he added.
Legislator Manpreet Singh Ayali said he would make all efforts to ensure that the villagers faced no problem. “We plan to new health schemes for the villagers,” he said
0 comments:
Post a Comment