Children’s Sad Story

ONE of the barometres to gauge how a nation is doing in general public welfare is certainly the way it treats its children. Every nation has to take care as best as it can of its children not only because they are the future pillars of society, but because they are the most vulnerable lot among the sections of the population. A nation cannot legitimately boast of much, no matter how well it is doing on some other aspects of national life, if it does not protect and nurture its children well. Nepalese children are an unfortunate lot. Their rights are trampled left and right. They have long been the victims in many respects engendered by poverty, callousness and apathy. Nepalese children carry a heavy load of injustices of their tiny shoulders: child labour, child marriage, girl trafficking, discrimination between sons and daughters, sexual abuse of children and so on. A recent report on the status of child rights in Nepal done by an NGO again confirm that unless a great deal of efforts are made sincerely, children in Nepal will continue to suffer from the above injustices. The survey found out that both the nature and events of violence against children have increased in the year 2000. They have been victims of widespread violence and torture at homes, in schools and at workplaces. That is violence against the future of Nepal.

As if Nepalese children did not face enough number of situations where they could easily be the victims of violence, a growing number of them are caught now in the ugly vortex of the Maoist insurgency. Some 57 children have lost their lives while hundreds of others have turned orphans during the last five years due to this violence. Thousands of children have been displaced from the insurgency-affected districts. The only little consolation in the rather bleak scenario regarding children, which the report points out, is that child illiteracy and infant mortality rates have gradually fallen. But these somewhat positive indicators in no way comper sate for the overall deterioration in the circumstances in which children live. Obviously what is being done is not enough. If child rights in the country is to be protected and promoted, the agencies responsible for formulating policies and implementing them have to coordinate better and do much, much more.

Eradicating TB

TUBERCULOSIS (TB), the killer diseases of yesteryears is now no more such a life threatening epidemic. And this has become possible due to the modern medical science that has been able to invent not only the cure for TB, but also the medicines that prevents one from getting infected by the TB bacteria. In fact, invention of TB cure was the greatest gift of the 20th century to the world, because with this cure, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who were in the past suffering from TB were able to get a new life. Even in Nepal, TB was regarded to be a major killer disease, even as late as just two decades back. Many Nepalese had to meet premature deaths due to the absence of the effective medicines to cure TB. But today it is not so. Almost all the children living in every nook and corner of the country have been vaccinated by B. C. G. so as to prevent them from the potential danger of being infected by the TB bacteria. The anti-TB vaccination campaign that was launched in the country resulted to be very effective in preventing people from suffering from this disease. Hospital records had it that there was a sharp decline in the TB patients in the last two decades. However, despite all these positive developments, many Nepalese people, especially those living in the far-flung villages are still suffering from TB. Illiteracy, rampant poverty and lack of health facilities in villages are the major causes that make these people suffer from T. B. How can a poor farmer of Mugu who has to sell his labour from morning to evening to maintain his livelihood, take his TB-affected son or father to hospital? The only solution for such a situation is to provide the people with efficient health facilities at their villages. As such, it was certainly a laudable initiative to organise a three-day regional level strategic planning seminar in the capital for future consultants in TB prevention with the objective of assessing the success of the Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) procedure. In fact, DOTS has, in the recent years, proved to be an effective tool to prevent TB. Hence, introduction of effective programmes for the successful implementation of DOTS not only within the country but also in the entire region is essential so that common people will get rid of the TB hazard for ever.