It is really surprising as well as disappointing why the makers of the Constitution of our country, did not include ‘Health‘ as one of the Fundamental Rights, people and even our parliamentarians are crying hoarse niece elementary education a fundamental right but what use is education if our bodies are not first looked and cared for. It is a healthy mind only in a healthy.
Therefore the basic and fundamental need is first make the body healthy. Our country suffers the greatest neglect on this score — the welfare of the general health is, hardly the top priority.
It is only recently, that thinking in an active way has started on the health front of the masses with an awakening aroused towards the environmental pollution and its ill effects on the general health of the masses.
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But even otherwise, nothing much has been done while much is required to be done in the health sector for the people of the country.
Surprisingly enough, only recently did the Indian representatives in the WHO raised the issue of making ‘health’ as a fundamental right in the well-known Alma- Ata declaration. They have awoken rather late enough to this grave and alarming a position and situation.
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Whether it is on the front of the general living conditions or on the level of the health-welfare schemes, at least some talking has started which means that the authorities have begun to realise the importance of the matter.
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If we throw a glance on the general health awareness among people in general we would feel aghast and distressed at the lack of the health sense among people.
In the villages, the living conditions continue to remain most unhygienic Inspite of all tall claims of community development schemes. Men and cattle share the same roof; dark dingy, smoky hovels like huts are their habitation in front of which foaming frothy filth flows in the drains.
The lanes lie littered with refuge dung and excreta and children and pigs share the same ground as their play fields. Only a few fortunate villages may have lanes paved with bricks.
Inspite of fifty pars of independence of the country there problem of clean drinking water— it is still not too many in most parts of the country-side.
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Wells get: up in summers, long distances have to be cove fetch a pail of water and very often — whether West Bengal, or in Orissa or in Assam or even in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan that the same pond meant to be used for washing of clothes and for utensils and the same water is drunk by animal: men alike.
How, then can there be healthy conditions of such a horrible situation? Young children, normally in their teens are working in the glass blowing fact in carpet industries and in many such industries deft and delicate fingers of children work wonders the same time work havoc in their lives.
The suffice conditions in the glass industries and fibers in the industries inhaled into the lungs leave these chill suffering from tuberculosis in particular and several diseases and end up in their becoming chronic patio in the prime of their lives.
Thus goes on the tale of labour and such a hue and cry is raised in social for as also at the level of the Supreme Court under Hue Rights; strictures are passed, restrictions are import judicial intervention is invoked only to be violated ‘impunity.
Children engaged in rag picking on stockpiles of garbage present the other scene of the story they are, some of them, the bread earners of the having lost a father or having an ailing moth name.
Pollution has run riot with the Indian condition is atmospheric pollution, there is environed pollution; there is noise pollution and what not the waters of the so-called godly rivers — the Ganga and the Yamuna — receive so much of the sewage waters of the big towns, so much of refuge and so much rubbish- so many highly contaminated effluents from factories-J. leather foundries, sugar factories, fertiliser factories and what not that these sacred rivers are ‘Sacred’ no longer but are more of health hazards particularly when flowing by the side of big industrial cities — like Delhi, Kanpur Varanasi, Patna or Kolkata.
So far as the health centers are concerned, there is a lot of talking that Primary Health Centers have been established in the remotest rural areas but what are they?
Doctors are hardly found present there; they are officially posted there while unofficially they are running their lucrative clinics in the neighbouring towns and the semi- qualified compounders attend to patients in a half hearted manner.
Even the conditions of the high-profile district hospitals have no better conditions. Dirty, upswept wards, extremely unclean beds and beddings, toilets — flowing with filth all over and every corner splashed with sticky ‘pan Masada’ sputum are a sight anywhere and everywhere.
No sooner does a building get constructed its corners by the side of the stairs are all smeared with red sputum. The lanes, the streets and drains of so-called metropolitan towns say the same sordid story all over.
Health hazards are at every corner and in every aspect of life. High profile nursing homes and medical centers are a cry for the moon for the majority and India, a country of the poor, suffers and shall keep sufferings health problems—’Health as a Fundamental Right ‘has not only to be enacted but to be implemented and even forced with a determination and a dedication — then only anything worthwhile can happen, shall happen.
More important than all this is the civic consciousness among the general public to keep life and hygienic. Public facilities need to be provided at all levels, in all matters and in all modes.