One year on, villagers in the region are still exposed to possible outbreaks of cholera and diarrhea due to the government´s sheer apathy toward providing them with basic sanitation facilities. “Nothing much has been done,” Rajendra Shah, a family planning officer in Jajarkot, told myrepublica.com over the phone. “Villagers are still relying on rivers for drinking water and defecating in the open,” he said. [break]
After concluding that last year´s outbreak was caused by water contaminated with human feces, the government had distributed packets of bleaching powder to purify water. However, all health posts in the regions have run out of the powder, though the summer season is already in.
“We can only advise villagers to boil water before drinking,” Shah says. “Given the lack of concern on the part of villagers, they are unlikely to listen to our recommendation.” According to him, health workers, and some better-off villagers in the district headquarters have access to potable water. “The welfare of the rest of villagers is totally dependent on the god´s grace,” he says.
Dr Krishna Hari Subedi, chief of Jajarkot district hospital, says that doctors, health workers and nursing staffers are prepared to fight any outbreak this year but he concedes the fact that preventive measures have not been taken at all. “We are on alert this year around,” he added.
Dr Subedi was the only doctor who tried to contain last year´s outbreak right from the beginning in the district. He said the government has sent an additional team of 29 Assistant Health Workers (AHWs) and Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) to Jajarkot. Besides, all vacant posts of health workers have been fulfilled. “Almost half of the posts were vacant last year,” he says. “We have asked all colleagues to not go on a long leave during this summer.”
As in the epicenter of last year´s outbreak, the government has added health workers to all districts in the far and mid western regions. In spite of all the government´s preparations about tackling outbreaks, only the general trend that same epidemic does not recur within the same region lets doctors and health workers heave sighs of relief.
No water, no toilet
Most of the Jajarkot folks fetch water directly from Bheri River. However, they are not aware of the fact that feces they defecate in the open can contaminate the water. According to the last census report, 81 per cent of Jajarkot folks still defecate in open. Of the total population, 122,769 villagers do not use toilets.
Jajarkot, which ranks 62 in the list of districts having toilet facilities, is just a tip of iceberg. It paints not-so-rosy pictures of far and mid west regions. Almost more than half of the population in the regions do not use toilets.
In the face of last year´s fatal epidemic, the government had allotted some money in its budget for helping villagers build toilets. It was a step towards achieving the government´s own target of providing sanitation facilities to every household by 2017. The government has formulated a policy of ´one household, one toilet´ to meet its own goal. But, given the government´s slow way of work, the goal is unlikely to be met.
“There has been no significant progress in providing toilet facilities to people in the year gone by,” says Anita Pradhan of WaterAid in Nepal, an INGO. “Villagers are still vulnerable to possible outbreaks.”
Provided the government´s sluggishness in achieving its sanitation target, people residing in remote villages are likely to fall prey to fatal epidemics for many more years. In 2001, the percentage of the total population using toilets was 46. In 2009, when the report of national labor force survey was made public, the figure went down to 43 percent.
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