Monday, August 24, 2015

Diseases : Adivasi kids turn orphans


Kudimetha Revati   
More than 600 Adivasi children have been orphaned with their parents having succumbed to seasonal diseases in the Agency areas in the Adilabad district of Telangana in the last 18 years.

Outbreak of viral fever, diarrhea, dengue and malaria fevers besides anemia have caused deaths of many Adivasis.

In many cases, all the family members or majority of them fallen got afflicted by seasonal diseases in the Agency areas.  

Risk from seasonal diseases is aggravated owing to less immunity in Adivasi people due to lack of nutritious food, polluted drinking water, poor sanitation and untimely medical treatment.

Most Adivasi orphaned children are in the age group of 4 years to 15 years. Not just parents, many children bellow 5 years have also succumbed to seasonal diseases.
Kudimetha Revati,8, lost her parents Shakunthala and Nagorao to seasonal diseases two years ago. 

Her grandfather Kudimetha Bojju now looks after her, her brother Vinayak and sister Anasurya in Pullala village in Sirpur( U) mandal. Revati and Vinayak have been suffering from malaria for the last four days.

One can find many orphans like Revati, Vinayak and Nagorao in the Adivasis gudems in the district, growing on their own without any governments support and care.
Revati’s aged grandfather Kudimetha Bojju, looking after his grandchildren, is worried about their future as he may not live long. 

He hopes the state government steps forward to rescue his grandchildren in the absence of guardians.  On few occasions, government officials and NGOs have intervened and put orphans in hostels meant for them.

Many orphaned Adivasis children were seen roaming in the gudems without work and some of them have ended up as cattle grazers with bleak future.

It is estimated that there were 1,500 orphan children of all categories and nearly 40 percent of them are from Adivasi communities in the district. State co-convenor of Child Rights Forum and district committee member of Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Meerza Yakoob Baig said more than 600 Adivasi children have been orphaned in the Adivasi gudems in the last 18 years.

He observed that child marriages were also resulted in deaths of parents at an early age and added that there were only four child homes for orphaned girls and only two open shelter homes for boys in the district.

Issue of large number of Adivasi orphans came up for discussion during Dr Shantha Sinha, then Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, visited the Adivasi gudems in the Narnoor mandal in the Adilabad district following the outbreak of seasonal diseases in 2008.   




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