DISEASES & INDIA

WATER BORNE DISEASES: Cholera. Dysentry. Typhoid. These sound like diseases from another time and place. But they’re still major killers in our country. The Ice Bucket Challenge - with its mostly pristine five-star ice - is in particularly poor taste here. Over one lakh people in India die of dirty water diseases each year. In one-third of India’s 600 districts, ground water is unfit for drinking as the concentration of fluoride, iron, salinity and arsenic exceeds tolerance levels. 



The disease is no doubt serious, debilitating and worthy of more research, but there are at least five other illnesses that affect far more people and are far more preventable.




HEART DISEASE - The urban curses of stress, smoking, sedentariness and a rich diet have made this the biggest Indian killer. Studies indicate that in a majority of cases preventable factors play a heavy role in the development and progression of heart disease.



MALARIA - That mosquitoes remain silent killers in India well into the second millennium is a deplorable scenario. Research indicates that over 40,000 Indians die of malaria every year.



AIDS - Maybe Daler Mehndi should have emptied a can full of condoms - new as well! A country of 1.3 billion that is progressing assiduously towards even greater, utterly unmanageable numbers, India could sure do with basic know-how on the French Letter.