Targetting Leprosy

THE government has reiterated its commitment to eliminate leprosy from the country within the targeted time. In a message on the occasion of the 50th World Leprosy Day, Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand said that with the multi-drug therapy in practice, the country would soon get rid of the disease that has been a public health problem for long. The malady, which results in physical deformity if not treated in time, is still largely considered by the superstitious to be the divine punishment for the misdeeds one committed in one's previous life. For that reason, those afflicted by leprosy, especially in the rural areas, are looked down upon and are segregated from the community. Therefore, in order to escape the so-called curse and the ensuing social shame, the patients tend to hide their disease which, against the prevailing misconception, is incommunicable as well as curable. Such a tendency to conceal the ailment comes in the way of eradicating the disease. That the government has been providing free medical treatment to the patients in all the 75 districts of the Kingdom, the number of the patients is expected to decline. However, the lack of the health workers trained specifically for the treatment of leprosy appears to be hindering the progress. In such a scenario, the health authorities need to ensure that there are adequate numbers of health workers in all the health centres and hospitals. Yet, in a country like Nepal where ignorance and false beliefs prevail in most of the rural parts, greater emphasis needs to be given on creating public awareness about the disease. Media as well as volunteer mobilisation could play important roles in such awareness creating campaigns. The country folks must first be convinced that the disease does not transmit by physical contacts and that it can be cured with regular intake of the prescribed medicines. Once the people are familiar with the real characteristics of the disease, the medical practitioners will find it easier to diagnose the disease and treat the patients, paving way for achieving the goal of eradicating leprosy.

Irrigation Systems

DURING an all-party meet held under the auspices of Narayani Irrigation Management Division No.5, among the decisions reached, one was to mobilise the local people to conserve the trees grown on either side of the main irrigation canal by forming water users' committee and handing them over the responsibilities of guarding, conserving the trees as well as controlling timber smuggling and punishing the guilty as per the existing regulations. In an agrarian nation like Nepal where the vast majority of the people are not only small farmers but also having to coax out more yields from their small plots of land to feed the yearly addition of family members, irrigation systems are not only most essential but also play a crucial role. For, they not only bring the much-needed water to irrigate the small farmers' farms so that they can plant more crops per year but also assist them to augment their farms' harvests. This, in turn, could greatly help the small farmers to uplift their low socio-economic status through the sales of surplus foodgrains and other farm products.

However, for all this to materialise, the irrigation systems, big or small, ordinary or state-of-the-art, have to constantly maintained and protected. Especially the irrigation systems' canals that branch out from the main irrigation dams and channelise the much-needed water through vast distances to the small farmers' farms. For, without the canals, the irrigation systems would be simply reservoirs-hence of not much utility to the small farmers. This is more so in the flat, alluvial plains of Terai region. There, just to channelise the waters from the main irrigation dams, not only large quantities of earth have to be excavated to make the canals, but to ensure that the much-needed water within the canals does not fritter away, embankments, made up of the vast amounts of earth that had been dug while making the canals, are constructed on either side of the canals. To further buttress these embankments so that they do not erode away or even cave in, trees are planted in their slopes, possibly with the help of farmers and water users' committees. As such, the decision to hand over the responsibility to protect the trees to the users' committees so as to protect the irrigation systems and canals is not only commendable and timely but it should be emulated by other irrigation authorities throughout the nation.