Children of a lesser god… the tales of a public health nomad
Imagine a world, where WE live
Where
· 844 Million people living without access to safe water
· 2.3 Billion people living without access to improved sanitation
· 1 Million people killed by water, sanitation and hygiene-related disease each year
· 3rd leading cause of child death is diarrhea
· $260 Billion lost globally each year due to lack of basic water and sanitation
· $18.5 billion economic benefits each year from avoided deaths if there was universal access to basic water and sanitation
What does it mean
· 1 in 9 people lack access to safe water
· 1 in 3 people lack access to a toilet
· More people have a mobile phone than a toilet
If you go to Sweden, you can drink tap water. It is a dream for us in low and middle-income countries. We have taken water for granted. We wasted it over time. Neither did we conserve it nor did we put in efforts to put in systems to recycle it. Then we all wanted to have endless children and the population expanded to 6 billion by adding another one billion in 12 years (2000–2012) and it will take another 22 years to reach 9 billion by 2040. Interestingly the world surface will still remain the same. Now we are experiencing the weather change. Ice poles are melting. Rain patterns are changing. Weather is getting warmer. I am wondering if the poles will shift.
Let's get back to the Children of a lesser god. I was in Zamfara state of Nigeria. I happen to visit a health facility and an adjoining health surveillance center. The health records in the health facility showed children high incidence of malaria, diarrhea and skin diseases. So where there is smoke, there is fire. It did not take me more than a minute’s walk to find out the reason. Just beside the village was a rain filled water pond. In anthropology, one approach is to observe. Just sit back and observe. Do not interfere. Don’t talk to anyone. Just have a poker face.
I was not horrified. I was petrified to observe children pushing water cans in a metal trolley, girls bringing water pots on their head. They would dip the water cans in the water pond, fill it, take it back home and also drink it from there at the same time. Now you would say what is wrong with that. You would ask if there was any piped water supply. The answer is no. Was there a borehole? Yes but no one would go there as one had to pump water out and would have to stand in a line. I would have been partially fine if the water was clean and people were not defecating and urinating beside the pond corners, I would have been fine if animals were not taking bath in the same pond as well, I would have been fine if laundry was not taking place at the same time in the same pond. I would have been fine if children and men were not bathing at the same time.
How much can we ignore this? How much can we live in our comfort zones? We brought in the highest officials in the government to witness what was and all was done was big talks and no action. Who is answerable to all this? Ask a mother who carries a child in her womb for three-quarters of a year time and then sees her baby get sick. Children are always children for parents no matter how much they grow and get old.
People of my generation have more yesterdays than tomorrows. What are we leaving behind?
I can bet all my years of life that this is not on the only place where such atrocities against children are committed. Instead of going to school and playing, children get to help in survival and that too on contaminated water. We don’t get to blame Allah, God, Lord or whatever you may call HIM, it is we to address this all more positively. You and I can buy potable water. We can install water purification systems in offices, in our homes. We are not the majority.
Water is getting scarce. Children are precious. Time is scarce. Life will go on. History will read not very fondly of us. There is an opportunity. The question is how much can you give and how much will we all step out of our comfort zone. How much is the child of a lesser god, any less than that of yours and mine? Think about it.
Next on this journey is the story of the refugees, the internally displaced population and what the world at war has brought to what we call humankind in this planet called earth.
Keep well and breathe. If you stop breathing, you stop thinking…
