Basic Things!
There are days in our life which makes us think hard about every single decision we have taken. This is one such incident which made me reflect on things.
This is the story about a garment factory supervisor hailing from a small village in Karnataka, about 150km from Bangalore who migrated to the city a few years back. A guy who is proud that he has made it big in this city. I had last seen him a couple of months ago with chronic bronchitis which I attacked immediately. This time around the patient looked pretty sick. He had parched lips, sunken eyes, dry skin and overall was very dehydrated. He said he had severe throat pain for 2 days; not even able to swallow a drop of water - forget a morsel of food. I examined his throat. It looked beefy red, severely inflamed back of the throat, tonsils, uvula. There were patchy exudates and eythema all over with swollen cervical nodes.
Simply it means a very severe form of throat infection. I had not seen that kind of infection earlier. I even suspected that guy may be "immuno-compromised" - that is with decreased immunity and may need further work up in that direction. Well, turned out the story was different. He said he visited his village 2 days ago forgot to take his water bottle. He consumed the water they got from a near by lake and that resulted in this infection. Villagers have no other source of drinking water. They drink contaminated water from the lake.
Next thing he said brought tears into my eyes, he said everybody there is really sick, they are all coughing and very sick. I can imagine the kind of organisms in the lake.
The guy continued "Cell phone ide adare kudoya neeru illa" which translated means people in villages have cell phones but no drinking water. I met this guy 2 weeks ago.Isn't safe clean drinking water our most basic right? In the new order of things at least it looks like it comes after Digital India. Share a photo of your polluted drinking water source on (google or facebook sponsored free) social media and wait for the government to take action. Oh yeah!
Can we please get our priorities right before it is too late?
This is the story about a garment factory supervisor hailing from a small village in Karnataka, about 150km from Bangalore who migrated to the city a few years back. A guy who is proud that he has made it big in this city. I had last seen him a couple of months ago with chronic bronchitis which I attacked immediately. This time around the patient looked pretty sick. He had parched lips, sunken eyes, dry skin and overall was very dehydrated. He said he had severe throat pain for 2 days; not even able to swallow a drop of water - forget a morsel of food. I examined his throat. It looked beefy red, severely inflamed back of the throat, tonsils, uvula. There were patchy exudates and eythema all over with swollen cervical nodes.
Simply it means a very severe form of throat infection. I had not seen that kind of infection earlier. I even suspected that guy may be "immuno-compromised" - that is with decreased immunity and may need further work up in that direction. Well, turned out the story was different. He said he visited his village 2 days ago forgot to take his water bottle. He consumed the water they got from a near by lake and that resulted in this infection. Villagers have no other source of drinking water. They drink contaminated water from the lake.
Next thing he said brought tears into my eyes, he said everybody there is really sick, they are all coughing and very sick. I can imagine the kind of organisms in the lake.
The guy continued "Cell phone ide adare kudoya neeru illa" which translated means people in villages have cell phones but no drinking water. I met this guy 2 weeks ago.Isn't safe clean drinking water our most basic right? In the new order of things at least it looks like it comes after Digital India. Share a photo of your polluted drinking water source on (google or facebook sponsored free) social media and wait for the government to take action. Oh yeah!
Can we please get our priorities right before it is too late?