SOCIAL SURVEY
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HEALTH & HYGIENE The area around Ganeshpura village is so dirty that one cannot stand it. The pathways leading to inner places of the two villages are littered with cow dung, urine and excreta of all sorts of animals and human beings that we used to be extra careful during our morning session of Prabhat Pheri. The villagers don’t understand the meaning of sanitation. Also the area near the paper mill is their dustbin. Though there is no so called dust bin meant for such purpose and Municipal Corporation comes to clean the area, the out side of the boundary wall of the paper mill, the people dump all sorts of things. It has become a heap of water bottles, tin cans, polythenes, wrapper of chocolates and toffees and all kinds of stuff. But at this, the villagers are not at fault and not to be blamed. They don’t have any dust bin to dump their wastes. They keep their houses, its surrounding, and the school clean but rest is dirty and stinking. The villagers seldom take care of their personal hygiene and sanitation. For example, they wear very dirty clothes and keep their children in the dirt too. Though the Govt. has provided enough of hand pump and some have their personal taps too, then too they do not wash their clothes regularly. Even if they don’t apply soap or washing powder, water is enough to keep them neat and clean. They keep their children so dirty that many flies were sitting all over their faces. Coming to health, there are no hospitals, no clinics or any other such place to visit when fallen ill. If any body is mildly ill or even seriously ill they have to visit Vidisha, bring back an auto rickshaw with them, then take the patient to the doctor. If any women is pregnant and has started labour, it’s really difficult for her to be reached to the hospital immediately. Every one has got to wait. In Vidisha, doctors are good enough for they reach for the village people, but medicines are not free. The villagers visit any medical store for the medicine. Even if their animals are sick, the vet has to be called from Vidisha only and its medicines costs the villagers Rs. 100 to Rs. 200. The villages are acquainted with the fact that they have to get their children immunized by taking them to vaccination centre set by the Government. They get their children up to the age of 5 years, every 3 months to the centers for polio drops and chicken pox vaccination. The campaign takes place in the school. There are no toilets available in the village though the Govt. promised to provide the same two years back. Only the schools have the toilets. The villagers go the farthest sides of the village to attend to the call of the nature. The gents of the village have got a very bad habit of taking tobacco and drinking liquor. They are addicted to it. A handsome salary goes into it. Though they know the after effects of narcotics, they love it. Even women are not far behind, they consume tobacco every day and are quite used to it. On digging for the reasons, we came to know that it gives them a high, they forget all their pains and sufferings and get to do their work with a lot of energy and very effectively and don’t feel tiresome. It’s a common problem in every household. The villagers don’t have any information about deadly diseases like AIDS or HIV. They feel very shy to talk about it. Also they don’t go for any operation that prevents unwanted pregnancies for they want lots of kids to last till their death and to become the support of their old age but don’t understand the consequences of it. Coming to food habits, they eat all the vegetables available at the Vidisha market or the vegetable seller who comes to their village for selling the items. But always as there are exceptions to every thing many people don’t eat spinach or other green leafy vegetable because they think it’s so cheap and so easily available that it does not matter to them. But what they don’t realize is very important for their health as well as their growth. These people also have one more draw back that they take meals only two a day contrary to that one should take three meals a day. When we inquired about their timings of taking meal, they told us that they take their first meal at around 11 a.m. and second meal at 09 p.m. When we got more deep into the matter, we were surprised to know that almost all women felt weakness and giddiness, even some times panting for breath on doing small chores of the house but they don’t know why it is so. We told them that’s because of incomplete diets in a day and also suggested them to take three meals a day. On asking the reasons for it, they tell us that they don’t have enough time to take three meals a day, they are always very busy. Whatsoever, they take balanced diet. Moreover, there are some who take three meals a day and don’t face such problems.
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