"And lest you try to look toward the ground for escape, beware of the
people
pissing and pooping everywhere"
---------------------------------------------
Health for Pune City’s Poor
Giving Vitamin A and Deworming Medicine to the Children of Pune’s Slums
Take green capsule. Clip end. Squeeze orange contents into child’s
mouth.
Take pink tablet. Put in child’s mouth. Tell child to chew. Repeat.
“It’s that simple,” explains Howard Schiffer, founder of Vitamin
Angels,
after a successful round of distributing Vitamin A (the green capsule) and
deworming medicine (the pink tablet) to dozens of children in Pune
(pronounced, and sometime spelled, “Poona” and located about three
hours
southeast of Bombay). With those easy steps — so simple a
nutrition-giving
neophyte like myself could master the process in one try — more than
70,000
children in the Pune district are being saved from blindness and sickness.
Schiffer calls the situation a great example of partnering between the
government, which hosted the distribution in its building and sponsors it
through the educational system; an Indian nonprofit, which carries out the
on-the-ground health training and vitamin distribution; and for-profit
companies, which provide Vitamin Angels with the products. And that’s
the
magical trio, according to Schiffer, which will ensure the success of any
similar program anywhere.
Though the distribution is astoni****ngly simple, the cost is perhaps more
baffling: for literally 25 cents — covering production, trans****tation,
and
dispersal — a child gets enough Vitamin A and deworming medicine to last
one
year. And for kids who live in slums where sewage washes down the alley
and
fresh food is hard to come by, getting such nutrition and protection
against
the elements of disease can be the difference between life and death.
After this morning’s distribution in the Pune district buildings —
which was
preceded by the typically ritualistic Indian greeting and thank you
ceremony
(even I got flowers and a wrapped present) — we entered the slums and
watched volunteer educators from the community show kids slides about
hygiene, teach teenagers about how to eat healthy and avoid anemia, and
instruct women of child-bearing age about prenatal health. Of the 2.5
million people who live in Pune, more than 1.5 million live in 564
assorted
slums, which range from two- and three-story corrugated metal shanties to
cloth tents along rivers of sewage where scavenging eagles soar above, the
lean-tos occupied by some of our planet’s poorest souls. (Yet, as
Schiffer
reminds, there’s always someone poorer, such as the dirt-crusted men and
women who sleep on the streets of Bombay. “Where’s the bottom?” he
asks
sincerely.) The slums’ poverty was intense, but the warmth and friendly
atmosphere of the slums made it clear why families have stayed there for
generations.
The day proved a long one — it began at 7 a.m., and we did not return to
the
hotel until 9:30 p.m. Today’s trip was shadowed with the threat of
possible
riots in Pune, as a politician who’s been starting ethnic hatred against
the
northern Indian immigrants was supposed to speak today, after a government
ban on his public rabble-rousing expired. We only saw a small crowd
gathered
in one area, listening to a speaker, and don’t know for sure if that had
anything to do with the threat. Otherwise, everything was calm, or at
least
as calm as can be expected when hordes of all ages live atop each other
and
vehicles of all shapes and sizes are hitting the highways like racetracks.
As I write this, the clock ticks past 10 p.m., and we’ve got an 8 a.m.
start
tomorrow, which promises more slums, but only about one hour away from
Bombay. Although conventional wisdom would hint otherwise, the pollution
is
remarkably worse outside of the city, with visibility much like looking
into
a thick San Francisco fog. It is, to be honest, unfit for the word
“smog”
and other words associated with such an atmosphere — smoky, hazy, etc.
—
also fail to do it justice. Venus, that planet shrouded in layers of
noxious
gases, is probably the best comparison. And lest you try to look toward
the
ground for escape, beware of the people pissing and pooping everywhere. As
one man recounted today, “All of India is a toilet.”
Luckily, the food is excellent, the people are kind, and the beer is ice
cold.
Matt Kettmann is re****ting from India until March 4. For more, tune into
Independent.com/india.
http://www.independent.com/news/2008/feb/25/health-pune-citys-poor/
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