Death for lack of Rs 1.25

Lakhs of children die of diarrhoea every year in India, but the Union health ministry refuses to launch a national campaign to stop the killer epidemic

Vijay Sanghvi Delhi

Life has little value when death becomes cheaper. It could not be cheaper than the price of Rs. 1.25 only. That is the price of one packet of Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) that can cure a child of acute diarrhoea. But lakhs of children do not get it and are condemned to die. Not one, not two, but more than six-and-a-half lakh children below the age of three die each year in India of diarrhoea.

According to reports from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other agencies, two thirds of deaths occur within the first week of birth. Out of every thousand births in the country, about 35 babies die within one month, 30 before one year, and 26 between age one and five.

Another study on ‘sex in infant mortality’ by Dr R Khanna, A Kumar and JF Vaghela reveals that diarrhoea is responsible for 22 per cent of infant deaths. But twice as many girls die as boys, though there is no significant difference between male and female children in other cases of infant deaths. In 10 per cent of deaths, there is no preceding illness and no other satisfactory cause has been found. Three out of every four such deaths are of girls. The conclusion is that the excess number of unexplained deaths occur because girls are treated less favourably than boys. It is possible that some people have hit upon a dubious, no-cost method of getting rid of girl children since the government has banned prenatal sex tests.

The Union health ministry appears to be unaware of these estimates of infant deaths. There was no mention of this mass killer in the annual report tabled by the ministry in Parliament, though the report devoted considerable space to the spread of AIDS and government schemes to control the disease. 

Lack of sanitation, improper disposal of human excreta, absence of safe drinking water and use of contaminated water are some of the chief reasons for the spread of diarrhoeal disease. According to one estimate, 2.6 billion people— 42 per cent of the world population—live in unhygienic conditions, without proper facilities of sanitation. Of these, 772 million live in India alone, which means, one fourth of the total number of people in our country live in unhealthy conditions.

Oral rehydration therapy is the best and cheapest cure for children and adults suffering from acute diarrhoea. Three packets of ORS are enough to rescue a patient from the jaws of death. The cure rate is more than 90 per cent and ORS packets are easily available, but they do not reach the intended beneficiaries.

Incidentally, ORS is an invention of India. The connection between diarrhoea and loss of fluids was first established in 1830 by a surgeon working for the British East India Company in Calcutta. The southern Ganges basin region (in Bangladesh, earlier in India) was afflicted with outbreaks of diarrhoea each year. However, serious interest in treating diarrhoea with oral rehydration did not pick up till the outbreak of cholera in the middle of the last century.