------------------------------------------------------------------ Do GOACAN a favour, circulate this email to your family members, relatives, neighbours and friends. Help others be BETTER INFORMED, The time is come for the people of Goa to ORGANISE not AGONISE !! ----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Documented by Goa Desc Documentation Service & circulated by Goa Civic & Consumer Action Network (GOA CAN)<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Ph:2252660 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- Take Remedial Steps ------------------------------- The outbreak of jaundice these days has put one very important question to every Goan. Is our state of health in condition. The answer is definitely no. Who is to be blamed, the small and not so small restaurants or the guardians of the health of the citizens of our State ? Who are these guardians? The health services of the government of Goa and the PWD of Goa.
The health department of the government of Goa, is one such guardian, what have they done to ensure the good health of the citizens of Goa? Nothing. You call them or inform personally the cases of malaria and the answer is we will take action, but nothing is done.
I have proof of at least one family, whose members had both the vivax and falciparum strain of malaria and when the health department was informed, the least they could have done was to fumigate the area, but till this date nothing has been done.
You see a big queue at the malaria eradication section, at Panjim and the same must be throughout Goa. What does the staff do? Take a smear of blood sample of the patient and without awaiting the results, four tablets of chloroquine are given and the patient is called the next day for the results. Does the technician, who made the smear, can by just looking at the patient, know that he or she has got vivax and will these tablets act on the falciparum strain?
These are the questions that one heading the section should put to himself or herself. WHO might have given these guidelines, but don't we have our own brains to decide what is to be done in such situations?
Now coming to the latest problem, which began in Panjim and spread out to other towns of Goa. Everyone knows that the cause of jaundice outbreak is because of the potable water being contaminated with either, sewage-water or some other putrid pollutant.
The Public Water Works Department of Goa has a moral duty to ensure the purity and safety of drinking water at any given time and to also ensure that no mix up takes place between potable water pipelines and sewage pipelines to very citizen of this State.
What do we see in Goa? The contractor gets an order from the landlord or restaurant owner to connect a fresh potable water pipeline to the PWD mainline, and no engineer from the department will be there to see if the job is done correctly or not, the contractors are only contractors, they cannot be the final authority.
Yes it is very easy for us to blame the restaurant owners for the outbreak of jaundice and other such waterborne diseases, but what power absolves the staff of Goa's PWD?
The cases of jaundice have become alarming because of the apathy of the PWD alongwith the health services department in Goa..
If remedial actions are not taken immediately, then Goa can forget expecting high spending tourists to come. These are one of the main branches of infrastructure that have to gear up urgently to save Goa. No amount of trips by our ministers and other bureaucrats to the whole world will ever help in bringing more high spending tourists to Goa if the health of the State is not good, only precious money of the Exchequer will go down the drain.
Alvaro Mascarenhas, Panjim in a letter to the Editor ------------------------------------ HERALD 25/8/03 page 6 ------------------------------------
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