SulabhENVIS Centre

Human excreta is rich in soil nutrients. In a year, one person craps 4.56 kg of nitrogen (n), 0.55 kg phosphorus (p) and 1.28 kg potassium (k) - enough to rejuvenate a 200-400 sq m patch. A billion can produce six million tonnes of NPK, one-third the total fertiliser usage in India.

POLL SEASON is close and top-shot leaders ought to be worrying about defection. But Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has his sights trained further off - on the 2010 Commonwealth Games - and his chief worry is defecation. Villagers relieving themselves out in the open, that is. With hardly 21 months to go for the Games, Delhi cuts a sorry figure on the sanitation front. Consequently, Singh has written separate letters to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Union Urban Development Minister S Jaipal Reddy, urging them to declare the entire national capital a 'no open defecation zone'. Sources in the ministry told HT that both the Delhi government and the Union Urban Development Ministry were yet to take action in this regard. According to the Rural Development Ministry, its main goal is to eradicate the practice of open defecation in the entire country by 2010. As Delhi is set to host the Commonwealth Games in October 2010, it would be appropriate on the part of the ministry concerned and the state government to declare the entire national capital a 'no open defecation zone' to avoid national embarrassment during the Games. Given the increase in Delhi's slum and rural population, poor people defecating in the open has become a common sight. India and the south Asian nations of Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives and Afghanistan had pledged in 2004 to urgently achieve safe sanitation for all. They are also committed to halving the number of people without access to safe sanitation by 2015, in keeping with the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. According to UNICEF, India's 'Total Sanitation Campaign' is currently operational in 578 of its 600 rural districts, with 48 per cent of rural populations having access to toilets and sanitation services.

AFTER BANNING plastic bags in the Capital, Delhi now wants to curb the menace of small laminated plastic packs used in products like tobacco, snacks and such tid-bits, adding to the waste stream significantly and polluting the environment.

The Delhi government has written to the Centre, seeking a check on products using laminated plastic wrappings at the manufacturing stage. Most of the products, such as tobacco, gutkha, etc, are not produced in Delhi, hence outside the city government's jurisdiction.

"We have written to the Ministry of Environment and Forests to take up the issue at the Centre. Use of products like gutkha is so huge in volume they add an immense amount of plastic daily to the environment. If not checked, they may defeat the purpose of the plastic bag ban," said a senior official.

What makes small plastic packs and wrappers hazardous to the environment is their uselessness to the ragpicker and the recycling industry .

"Since such packets cannot be used in recycling, unlike thick plastic bags, ragpickers do not collect them and the recyclist does not care about them. They just keep clogging the solid waste stream," said Ravi Agarwal of non-governmental organis ation (NGO) Toxics Link. "Fifty per cent of all plastic used is in packaging," he said.

At the court battle, laminated pouches had come up in arguments several times with the court-appointed committee seeking a ban on them.

The committee had representations from Delhi Pollu tion Control Committee, Central Pollution Control Board and other stakeholders.

"The court had on record praised this recommendation saying it should be implemented. If Delhi government cannot control the manufacturing stage of the products that use laminated pouches, then they can at least ban their use here," said Vinod Jain, petitioner in the PIL that led to the ban.

According to the government, the estimated volume of small plastic pouches being released in the environment as waste could be larger than the volume of plastic bags discarded every day .

avishek.dastidar@hindustantimes.com

Source: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com

Sanchita Sharma

New Delhi

DR PRAKASH C. Verma, 32, is part of the small four-doctor team that works in the neonatal department of the government-run District Hospital in Guna in Madhya Pradesh. What makes him a newsmaker is that he has snatched more than 1,500 malnourished and underweight children from sure death in 2008.

How it’s done is simple. When a woman goes into labour, the village healthworker calls the district hospital for emergency transport. The woman is rushed to the hospital, where the baby gets an immediate health check-up after birth.

In a year, over 11,000 women in Guna have used the call service and an average of five sick children are admitted in the neonatal ward every day .

“In just one year, we have saved 1,500 lives in our small department that caters to a population of 10 lakh people. Saving a baby and hand ing her back to his mother give me satisfaction,” said Dr Verma, who did his MD in paediatrics in Bhopal but left the city to work in Guna on December 14, 2007.

Dr Verma clearly plans to stay on. Unlike other doctors on small-town postings, he has moved his family to Guna to be with him. “I’m not alone. Others like me are choosing to work in their home state, Madhya Pradesh, which is among India’s five states with the highest neonatal mortality (death within the first 28 days of life),” he said.

India, Indonesia and Bangladesh are the three countries with the largest health-worker shortage in absolute numbers in the world, says UNICEF’s The State of The World’s Children 2009: Maternal and Newborn Health report. Research has sown that over 80 per cent of India’s 78,000 women (who die at childbirth) and 72 per 1,000 children (who die before age 5) can be saved if they get basic healthcare services.

“It’s a vicious cycle. Babies whose mothers die during the first six weeks of their lives are far more likely to die in the first five years,” said Dr Karin Hulshof, UNICEF India Representative. Last year, the Hindustan Times had broken the news of malnutrition-related child deaths in four tribal districts of Madhya Pradesh — Satna, Khandwa, Shivpuri and Sheopur.

“India has cut its underfive deaths from 117 to 72 per 1,000 births between 1990 and 2007, but the same progress has not been made in addressing health risks of mothers. The Guna success has the potential to change that,” said Dr Hulshof.

sanchitasharma@hindustan times.com

DR PRAKASH C. Verma, 32, is part of the small four-doc- tor team that works in the neonatal department of the government-run District Hospital in Guna in Madhya Pradesh. What makes him a newsmaker is that he has snatched more than 1,500 malnourished and under- weight children from sure death in 2008. How it’s done is simple. When a woman goes into labour, the village health- worker calls the district hos- pital for emergency trans- port. The woman is rushed to the hospital, where the baby gets an immediate health check-up after birth. In a year, over 11,000 women in Guna have used the call service and an aver- age of five sick children are admitted in the neonatal ward every day . “In just one year, we have saved 1,500 lives in our small department that caters to a population of 10 lakh peo- ple. Saving a baby and hand- ing her back to his mother give me satisfaction,” said Dr Verma, who did his MD in paediatrics in Bhopal but left the city to work in Guna on December 14, 2007. Dr Verma clearly plans to stay on. Unlike other doc- tors on small-town postings, he has moved his family to Guna to be with him. “I’m not alone. Others like me are choosing to work in their home state, Madhya Pradesh, which is among In- dia’s five states with the highest neonatal mortality (death within the first 28 days of life),” he said. India, Indonesia and Bangladesh are the three countries with the largest health-worker shortage in absolute numbers in the world, says UNICEF’s The State of The World’s Chil- dren 2009: Maternal and Newborn Health report. Re- search has sown that over 80 per cent of India’s 78,000 women (who die at child- birth) and 72 per 1,000 chil- dren (who die before age 5) can be saved if they get ba- sic healthcare services. “It’s a vicious cycle. Ba- bies whose mothers die dur- ing the first six weeks of their lives are far more like- ly to die in the first five years,” said Dr Karin Hul- shof, UNICEF India Repre- sentative. Last year, the Hin- dustan Times had broken the news of malnutrition-re- lated child deaths in four tribal districts of Madhya Pradesh — Satna, Khandwa, Shivpuri and Sheopur. “India has cut its under- five deaths from 117 to 72 per 1,000 births between 1990 and 2007, but the same progress has not been made in addressing health risks of mothers. The Guna success has the potential to change that,” said Dr Hulshof.