Monsoonal Diseases

With the monsoon come flies and mosquitoes. With flies and mosquitoes come gastro-enteritis and malaria - and nowadays dengue fever as well.

Though not insect-borne, we can add to the above diseases the H1N1 flu (Schwein flu mein Freund!) which is making a slow and steady come-back in Maharashtra. 81 cases were reported last week.

Our kids sleep each night under a mosquito net. During the day we go about with many a winged insect around.

The government public health department occassionally does 'defogging' using insecticides like in the pic above. That happens about once a year around here. Usually when there have been some deaths to dengue already.

We have a chap who comes at least once a week and squirts what must be a larvacide spray into standing water. Dressed in khaki, he wears a big cylinder of pesticide strapped to his back and carries a small nozzle by which he sprays the stuff. He came to the JSK office this morning while we were singing during our morning prayers. Since he knows what to do - he walked through the chorusing staff - and went into the JSK toilet - squirted a bit - and then came out - got a signature to show that he had done his stuff - and then headed back out to continue his work.

As a nation we may be hurtling into the wonders of the 21st century - but we certainly have not figured out how to protect ourselves from small insects that enjoy our blood - and our faeces.

Things are only worse in the hinterland.

I remember taking a session on malaria with some of the outreach workers and health volunteers of the Diocese of Palamu in Jharkhand. We were about 30 folks in a room, and I wanted to get people thinking about how unpleasant malaria is. I was sure that someone in the room would be able to tell us, so I asked: "please put up your hand if you have had malaria." A forest of hands shot up. I then asked the opposite question: "please put up your hand if you have never had malaria." My hand was the only one up. Every single person in that room had already had malaria - and survived. How many others were dead?

We haven't even started talking about diarrhoeas - something that our dear flies and dirty hands are oh so good and passing on. Having just come through a (mercifully short) episode of Bombay Belly - I can testify that it is no fun to have the runs.

As a team we are stressing "hand washing" this month as our main health educational message. For the sake of stopping the runs. For the sake of preventing long-term gut dwellers who eat the food our friends eat - but from the inside of their digestive tracts! And amazingly enough - handwashing also stops the spread of H1N1 (swine flu) for which our HIV positive friends are especially susceptible to. Good hand-washing takes six separate steps - and should be done long enough to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice. Its easy to tell others to do something. Its always quite another thing to live it out ourselves. But change we must - and so you see the Eichers urging each other to do the 6 steps when we wash our hands before food.