Epidemic:

February 14/2015 : Surprisingly, even in this day and age, Orissa is facing a severe epidemic like condition. Jaundice, initially thought to have raised its ugly head some seven months ago, in August 2014, at Sambalpur, has been having an unhindered run across the length and breadth of the State. With nearly 26 dead in Sambalpur till date and totally about 50 dead all across Orissa and more than three thousand affected, the situation is grim. Seems like no doctors are in sight and the health and sanitation infrastructure has completely collapsed.

Recent reports claim nearly 116 people have been diagnosed with jaundice in Cuttack city alone. It is a matter of great concern that when, and only when, this kind of a terrible disaster strikes that our governance system summons review meetings and goes to the ever-ready-to-please media for appropriate statements. Those fellows sure love watching themselves on the telly screen and must be admiring their own profile shots staring dispassionately at the filthy drain water mingling with drinking water where pipes have burst. We are told Cuttack city has had, in most parts, no new water supply pipelines laid since the late 1940s. Where new pipes have been put in, the changes have been partial. Indicating that old pipes coexist with the new, thereby allowing outside contaminated water to seep through.

The obvious question could be, who is to blame? In reality, with multiple layers of government departments, many stages of bureaucratic administrators as well as elected representatives in the municipalities, urban centers like Sambalpur and Cuttack and most other places have only the citizenry to blame for such death-dealing blows! We, as a people, have become totally uncaring towards our own environment and surroundings. So much so that we do not even bother about own health. In our rush to blame the government for its universal failures, we have forsaken our duties and responsibilities. To compound these problems, we have set on a favored course to add with vigor to an unmanageable burgeoning population.

Taking care of our own drinking water sources, living in clean and unpolluted spaces ourselves and not destroying other's space, going all out ourselves in maintaining urban health standards and actively stopping others from committing acts that damage the environment are some such steps that desperately need to be adopted by us all. Indifference and a hands off attitude would, as is happening now, surely exterminate us all. That too, very painfully.

It must, however, be pointed out very harshly that the health department of the state government has failed, over such a long period of time, to stem the epidemic. This spread of jaundice has grown to such a massive proportion primarily because no one has had the time or inclination to think and formulate a strategy to apply brakes on it. Apart from that, it is incomprehensible why no steps are being taken, even now, to put up a mammoth publicity campaign that would educate the average citizen to steer clear of the ever growing disease. The authorities are probably extremely callous and uncaring, this in spite of the imminent danger looming large over us all. Guess they too have no time as all of them seem to be busy doing nothing.

An incredibly incapable and disinterested lot, they appear to be!