night soil removed by people a shame on 21st century India !

Census makes a stinking revelation

Bageshree S.

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The Karnataka government is either in denial mode or underplaying the existence of the inhuman practice of men and women being employed to carry night soil, because the Census data has a different story to tell.

It revealed that 0.1 per cent of all households — which translated to over 13,000 of 1.3 crore households — still had night soil removed by people. In addition, as many as 0.2 per cent (or 26,000) households had ‘night soil removed by animals', which also clearly indicated that it involved human labour.

The national figures on the practice of people carrying night soil was dismal, with 0.3 per cent of households still employing humans to do the task. Jammu and Kashmir (8.9 per cent), Manipur (2 per cent), and Uttar Pradesh (1 per cent) had the worst record on this count.

The figures for Karnataka gained significance in the light of a Public Interest Litigation petition in the High Court, which sought a ban on manual disposal of night soil.

The Savanur incident

The issue of manual scavenging and the plight of those traditionally involved in the work had come into sharp focus in 2010 when members of the Bhangi community at Savanur in Haveri district poured human excreta on themselves in protest against the attempt of the town municipal council to evict them from their homes.

The petitioner in the PIL, senior counsel R.N. Narasimhamurthy, had argued that the practice of workers carrying human excreta was “a national shame” and said that the State had failed to curb the system even after six decades of the country's Independence.

The practice of carrying night soil violates Articles 38, 42 and 46 of the Indian Constitution and is explicitly banned under the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993.

High Court orders

In connection with yet another Public Interest Litigation, filed by the People's Union of Civil Liberties on manual scavenging, the High Court had, in January, expressed displeasure over the lack of measures taken to mechanise the entire process of cleaning of sewerage in the State, in spite of orders passed by it earlier.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2996640.ece#

 

IPV given with needle and syringe ID more effective than with a needle free device

         Dear friends,
                             After they slowed down the process to pass on the low cost benefit of antirabies vaccination, they are now trying to sell costly inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) and slow down the introduction of low cost intradermal  IPV, to benefit multinationals.
Moreover when pressure is rising to introduce low cost IPV, they are trying to chip in many needle free devices to help some other multinationals to make programme costs further high and poor countries having to pay more.
Below are some studies, just copy paste the link for more understanding,
       
The immunity using needle free jet devices is not optimum as is evident in the study in Cuba, the link,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20350164

But IPV given with needle and syringe  is equally effective as is evident in a study in Philippines, the link,

http://ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712%2811%2900218-9/abstract?elsca1=etoc&elsca2=email&elsca3=1201-9712_201202_16_2&elsca4=infectious_diseases

Randomized controlled study of fractional doses of inactivated poliovirus vaccine administered intradermally with a needle in the Philippines

So, we need to explore low cost intradermal IPV with needle and syringe as a viable option, to include devices will make the programme more costly and unviable.

Thanks,