|
Deadly diseases prey on hotel boys
Over 10,000 teenagers form the workforce of Mumbai's booming restaurant business. Part of the organized as well as the unorganized sector, these boys are highly prone to contracting AIDS, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases, reports Sharmistha Chatterjee in
Times of India dated January 05, 2002
Nikute Mishra (13), a cleaning boy in a restaurant in Parel, works 18 hours a day and sleeps on a straw mat in a dingy room, along with nine others. The restaurant owner sent him for a check-up after he coughed blood. He has been diagnosed for tuberculosis.
Atul (15) ran away from his home in Karnataka at the age of nine and now works in a Udipi restaurant at Dadar. A frequenter to the red light areas, he was tested positive for HIV.
"Mumbai has one of the biggest hotel businesses in the country," points out Dr Arvind Shah, senior medical officer at the Mumbai Municipal Corporation's STD Clinic, which caters to a large number of such patients. "And these boys are highly vulnerable to these killer diseases."
Various health organizations in the city have identified them as high-risk groups and working towards spreading the word of awareness. According to Nirja Mattoo, executive member of an NGO called Community AIDS & Sponsorship Programme, which is working with over 1000 such restaurant boys, "the working conditions at most restaurants are not conducive. The boys develop numerous health problems, besides being exposed to homosexual incidents." Part of the large migrant population from interior Maharashtra (in western India) and Karnataka (in South India), eight out of every 10 such hotel workers are initiated into the world of brothels.
Read the full text of story at: http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?catkey=1225119221&art_id=1060236898&sType=1
Bihar Government may supply TB drugs through NGOs
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [MONDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2002 reports that Bihar Minister of state for health Akhilesh Prasad Singh, while inaugurating the third conference of the Bihar Tuberculosis Association (BTA) here on Sunday, said that the state government would consider the proposal for supplying TB medicines through NGOs of repute like the BTA for free distribution among such patients. The minister said this in reply to BTA chairman U N Vidyarthi's welcome address in which he maintained that the elusive target of controlling TB can be achieved only through the concerted efforts of all the components of the health care system, including government departments, private practitioners, NGOs and the media.
Vidyarthi said involvement of the community plays a vital role in successful implementation of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme. NGOs are normally closer to and more trusted by patients. They play an active role in health promotion in the community as they work in such areas where access to medical facilities is limited and as such the NGOs have an important role to play in the government-sponsored programmes.
Referring to the poor management and lack of infrastructure of the government-sponsored Primary Health Centers and sub-canters, he said most of such centers are unable to meet the requirements of patients.
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?catkey=-2128817995&art_id=71685882&sType=1
Web Call: A visit to www.dantb.org
The Danish Agency for Development Assistance (DANIDA ) has been sustaining various projects in the health sector in India since the late 1970s through different ventures in areas as diverse as primary health care, control of leprosy (DANLEP) and blindness (DANPCB). Since 1996, it has been supporting the control of tuberculosis through DANTB. Danida's support to RNTCP in the Indian State of Orissa focuses on the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in society.
The website of DANTB, www.dantb.org
has been designed to provide information on its activities in India. The commitment of DANIDA to help India strengthen the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) and raise the level of community awareness in selected districts of Orissa, have been adequately explained along with the kind of project support being provided by the Agency. The site also goes on to explain details of the disease and the breakthrough achieve in its cure by the use of Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course (DOTS). The core five – point DOTS Strategy formulated by RNTCP and its translation into practice by DANTB has been succinctly explained. The use of IEC, Community participation, Gender initiatives, capacity building, health systems research, monitoring, geographical information systems, infrastructure development and drug distribution have been given in details on separate pages. These links make for very interesting insights into the problems faced in implementing programmes of this nature in developing countries. The Gender Initiative is an unique component of the programme and should provide effective lessons into successfully overcoming the barriers to women seeking treatment for TB.There is a presence of links to various publications of DANTB as well as to other related sites.
The website is a good showcase of a successful implementation of a TB control programme in an underprivileged society and should be of immense help to health workers involved in designing and carrying out such initiatives.
________________________________________________________________________
Click here
to view The Highlights of TB.net Conference held @ Kathmandu,
Nepal 22-24 February 2002 on TB HIV and Media
|
