Coming down heavily on the State Government’s failure to check the spread of the Japanese Encephalitis in undivided Koraput district, Maa Ghar, a social body working for hapless children and women, has decided to approach the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Supreme Court and seek their intervention to protect lives of children and people in the district.
“Due to apathetic attitude of the district and health administrations, Japanese Encephalitis has taken epidemic proportions and taking lives of innocent tribal children. Had steps been taken to check malnutrition, unhygienic conditions and related preventive measures, the disease could not have taken so many lives.
The Stage Government has completely failed to provide health services in the district,” alleged Maa Ghar president Rutuparna Mohanty at a Press conference here on Saturday.
Mohanty said a seven-member team led by her and comprising Maa Ghar Nabarangpur unit president Kadambini Tripathi, Malkangri president Prasanti Bisoyi, State Gandhi Binova Sarvodaya executive member Nayana Majhi, noted social worker Shailabala Panda, State Freedom Fighter’s Memorial Council executive president Suna Tripathi and Maa Ghar legal advisor Harinarayan Behera, social worker Bhaskar Behera and youth leader Abdul Firoz as members visited the affected villagers and conducted on-the-spot study.
“We met affected children and inspected health services and sanitation aspects. We were astonished to see insensitiveness of health officials and sheer negligence of the district administration in treating patients. Utter poverty, malnutrition and unhygienic environment coupled with lack of coordination between district administration and health department and negligence of Child and Family Welfare Department officials and lack of prevention led the disease to spread,” Mohanty said, adding, “We had submitted a six-point charter of demands to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik though the district Collector on November 4 seeking seven days time to control spread of the killer disease.
As the period is over, we have decided to file writ petitions at the NHRC, Supreme Court and the High Court to save children’s life from the killer disease’ said Mohanty.
We had demanded to provide Rs 5 lakh to the family of each deceased, announce the epidemic as natural disaster, distribute nutritious foods among the affected children and their mothers, undertake awareness and immunisation programmes in 108 villages, appoint expert doctors at the DHH and to clean villagers employing NDRF and OSDMA teams and action against the Governent officers, who have neglected in duty, she said.
Apart from approaching courts, the Maa Ghar would seek the Governor’s intervention to provide special care to tribal children as per the Constitutional norms and to seek information regarding funds coming under the Tribal Welfare head and their utilization through RTI Act and inform the same to the general public.