Frequent reports on deaths of children and adults due to malnutrition, poverty and diseases in Adivasi colonies are shaking the conscience of Kerala even as the Congress-led UDF Government is entering its third year in office with CM Oommen Chandy reaffirming its commitment to implementation of pro-poor schemes.
It has now become clear that deaths due to poverty, malnutrition and poverty-generated diseases are not limited to the Adivasi colonies in Palakkad district’s Attappadi region where 34 children, including infants, have died of malnutrition in the past one year. As many as 21 children have died in Attappadi due to malnutrition this year alone.
The story of the plight of Adivasis living in the colonies in the Nelliyampathy forest range, a famous tourist destination in Palakkad known for its orange gardens and other plantations, is no different. At least 30 deaths due to poverty, malnutrition and diseases have been reported from Nelliyampathy in the past one year.
Exposing the hollowness in the claims of the Government on its commitment to ensuring tribal welfare, reports say that avoidable diseases like cholera, tuberculosis, anemia and jaundice are spreading through the Adivasi colonies in Nelliyampathy and that most of the deaths occurring there are due to these diseases and poverty.
The reports on the dangerous health situation in the tribal settlements of Nelliyampathy and Parambikkulam forests, a tiger reserve, are coming out just when the State was thinking deaths due to poverty and malnutrition were limited to the colonies of Attappadi, a region devastated by land-grabbers and vested interests with systematic anti-Adivasi activities over several decades.
The large-scale incidence of such diseases, sparked off by lack of hygiene, proper sanitation and safe drinking water in these areas is being reported close on the heels of the spread of cholera in the Adivasi colonies of Wayanad to where the State’s Tribal Development Minister PK Jayalakshmi of the Congress, herself an Adivasi, belongs.
“Adivasis are safe nowhere in Kerala,” says Jayakumar, a member of an NGO. “It is the same story everywhere: Absence of sanitation, availability of food and clean drinking water and lack of facilities for proper medical treatment. One wonders what the successive Governments have been doing to push these poor souls into such inhuman conditions,” he says.
Severe problems of health and hygiene are reported from the Adivasi colonies of Cherunelli, Kalchadi, Kariyarkutty and Karappara in the plantation regions of Nelliyampathy. Health workers who held a camp at Cherunelli recently had found that all children aged between two and eight in the colony were suffering from anemia and jaundice.
A study conducted jointly by the Department of Forest and a rural development society at Kalchadi Adivasi colony found that 90 per cent of the people there were suffering from tuberculosis. Ten deaths due to tuberculosis have been reported from this colony in the past one year.
The Kariyarkutty and Karappara Adivasi colonies are in the grip of diseases like beriberi and sickle cell anemia. Four deaths due to diseases were reported from these colonies three months back. Health workers confirm that almost all the children below six years of age in these colonies are seriously anemic.
“The Government is letting children in Attappadi die of malnutrition though it is very much on the road map of Kerala. Government agencies excuse themselves saying that the Nelliyampathy colonies are inaccessible. Why should there be the Health and Tribal Welfare Departments when they can’t do what they are supposed to do,” asks a voluntary health worker based in Palakkad.