FLUORIDE IN WATER A CONTINUING MENACE IN N’PADA
Wednesday, 10 May 2017 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in Bhubaneswar
The impact of fluorosis on children is higher, i.e., more than 30 per cent. This is the finding of a survey conducted by NGO RCDC in August-September 2015. Trained personnel of the NGO had conducted checkup of 35,121 persons in 148 villages and 249 schools spreading over 25 gram panchayats of five blocks. When the sample taken in villages was eight per cent to 10 per cent of the total population in each village, the coverage in the schools was about 88 per cent of the children. Out of the 35,121 people covered under health screening, 22,096 were schoolchildren in the age group of 6 to 14.
The health checkup reveals that Sinapali block ranks top in fluorosis-affected children with 50 per cent of the total children screened having dental fluorosis. Sinapali is followed by Boden block (48%), Komna (39%), Nuapada (19%) and Khariar (16%).
Kendumunda panchayat of Sinapali block has highest percentage of affected children. Checkups of 653 children had been done in 12 schools of this panchayat out of which 542 (82%) are suffering from dental fluorosis. Four panchayats out of 25 surveyed have more than 50 per cent dental fluorosis-affected children.
“The fluorosis among children is mostly at dental stage, which may turn to skeletal if the consumption of fluoride-affected water continues,” say experts. The village data are a little bit different from school-level data in terms of affected persons. Nearly 50 per cent of the screened population is suffering from fluorosis in Khaira, Domjhar and Karlakot gram panchayats of Boden block, which ranks top among the five blocks in the district with a little more than 37 per cent. In the village level checkup, the skeletal fluorosis is higher than dental fluorosis (about 66% of the total affected is skeletal and 32% dental).
It is now an established fact that the main cause of fluorosis among people in the district is groundwater. About 60 per cent of the tube-wells here contain high level of fluoride though it is the main source of potable water. The first symptoms are disfiguring of teeth and pain in joints that gradually turns to weaken the bones and makes the affected person crippled.
Karlakot of Boden block is the village where the first case of fluorosis was detected in the district in late 1990s. Prafulla Behera (55) of the village was already crippled when it was found that he had been affected by the dreaded disease. Later, it was found that the tube-wells which were the source of drinking water for the villagers were affected with high level of fluoride.
To address the problem, the Government established a drinking water supply unit 15 years ago which supplied water from river. But unfortunately, the project did not work regularly.
“We are forced to depend upon tube-wells again when the water supply unit stopped working either due to technical problems or due to the problem of electricity,” say villagers. “As a result, the water supply project does not help reduce the number of fluorosis-affected persons,” they add.
The revelation by people is proved true when it is verified with the age of affected persons. More than 50 per cent of the affected people at this village have born after the establishment of the water supply project. Two years have already passed since the sanction of Rs 543 crore by the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) for construction of mega drinking water supply projects in fluoride-affected areas of Nuapada district, but the move is still a nonstarter.
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