------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre Ph:2252660 Website: www.goadesc.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Press clippings on the web: http://www.goadesc.org/mem/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- PWD Killed Rajendra ----------------------------- The death of the 37-year-old Saligao resident, Rajendra Kudnekar, the first victim of the jaundice epidemic under scores one very grim ground reality. It is the poor who are most vulnerable to every epidemic and indeed every disease.
Rajendra, though a resident of Saligao was living in rented accommodation in Merces with his wife and two children. Rajendra worked as a peon in the Employees State Insurance Corporation at Patto in Panjim. Rajendra had no vices. He had no history of drinking. Otherwise, we are sure the government and the health authorities would have very happily attributed his death to chronic alcoholism.
Rajendra contracted the disease because he regularly frequented two of the contaminated restaurants. But unlike in the case of the other jaundice patients, the epidemiological officer had no record of his eating patterns.
In fact, Dr Tamba was apparently not even aware that Rajendra the humble peon from Patto had died of jaundice. Since Rajendra was only a peon, his death due to jaundice went almost unnoticed even in the Goa Medical College.
Rajendra died at 5.30 a.m. in the morning but as of 11 in the morning the Dean, Dr Dhume was not even aware that jaundice had claimed its first victim. Perhaps, the head of the medicine department did not consider the death of a mere peon important enough.
When we asked Dr Dhume, he informed us he would have to check with the medical superintendent who was away all of Monday morning attending a meeting of the Productivity Council or some such thing. Till well past noon the Chief Epidemiological Officer was not even aware that jaundice had claimed its first victim. Nobody had bothered to inform him.
Dr Tamba came to know absurdly enough only after we informed him that jaundice had claimed its first official victim. It was only then that he rushed to the Goa Medical College hospital and confirmed for himself that jaundice had claimed its first victim.
But even after the Chief Epidemiological Officer had finally discovered that jaundice had claimed its first victim nobody thought it fit or necessary to inform the acting Chief Secretary, Vijay Madan who is heading the jaundice containment mission. It was we who first informed Vijay Madan that jaundice claimed its first victim.
We are not putting all this on record to demonstrate that our intelligence and surveillance machinery is better than that of the government. But to dramatise the total lack of co-ordination even between the Goa Medical College and the Health Services.
If the medicine department of the Goa Medical College does not consider it important enough to communicate the first jaundice death to the Chief Epidemiological Officer why blame the private nursing homes and private practitioners?
And we have been consistently and persistently told that jaundice or hepatitis A and hepatitis E are not serious life threatening diseases. We are told that they are self-limiting.
The Indian Medical Association in its press note called it a symptom, not a disease. So will somebody please explain how and why young Rajendra died of a self-limiting, not life-threatening condition which is not even a disease and just a symptom according to the Goa branch of the Goa Medical Association?
The Goa Medical College has, of course, its stock explanations. That he was brought to the Goa Medical College hospital only at a very late stage. The alibi of the Goa Medical College has always been the lament that patients go to private doctors and nursing homes. Who aggravate the medical conditions of the patient and shift the patient to the Goa Medical College only when the patients is in a terminal condition.
Not that this does not happen. But did the Chief Epidemiological Officer attempt to find out who treated Rajendra and who recommended his admission to the GMC?
The probability is that Rajendra either went to the ESI doctor or went directly to the GMC. Because unlike the rich and the powerful and the bold and the beautiful,the poor have no choice.
And since the GMC did not seem to be too anxious or in a hurry to inform the Epidemiological Officer of the first jaundice death, is it possible that private nursing homes have been even more reticent.
Has the nodal group checked if any of the deaths in the private nursing homes are due to jaundice. This is because private nursing homes are prone to suppress details of their failures. What all this adds up to is that the machinery is not functioning even at the level of basic communications.
The other lesson from this tragedy is that it underscores that it is the poor who are most vulnerable. The poor which would include low paid employees or even the class four employees in the government who cannot afford to pay for mineral water.
At home they could, if they have been made sufficiently aware, boil the water. But at restaurants, particularly the cheapest restaurants which are the only ones they can afford to eat in or drink in, they cannot buy health insurance by asking for mineral water.
All this business of hygiene are basically middle class concerns. Either out of ignorance or more likely a sense of fatalism, the wretched and the poor are indifferent to what they eat and where they eat. In any case they have no choice. What does the poor immigrant worker do?
The onus of making reasonable priced hygienic or at least safe potable drinking water is on the government. Ultimately it is the government, more specifically the Public Works Department, which is responsible for the death of Rajendra.
And nobody has yet explained why the Neptune hotel was sealed only on the 4th of August, if as the Chief Minister claims the Public Works detected and sealed the leakage on the 12th of July.
And we hope the Chief Minister will announce an ex-gratia payment to the family of Rajendra and provide a job for the widow. Because Rajendra was the only bread winner in the family. ---------------------------------------------- Editorial in HERALD 28/8/03 page 6 ----------------------------------------------
======================================= GOA DESC RESOURCE CENTRE Documentation + Education + Solidarity 11 Liberty Apts., Feira Alta, Mapusa, Goa 403 507 Tel: 2252660 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] website: www.goadesc.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Working On Issues Of Development & Democracy =======================================
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