By Sibani Nayak | Cluster Educaor
In the beginning of the year intervention, the organization has faced a serious challenge of Corona virus when the World Health Organisation has declared the new Corona virus outbreak - COVID-19 as a global pandemic. Only a few times in the history of mankind have human beings as a race faced challenges beyond their comprehension. With advances in science, this phenomenon has become a rarity.
India scrambles to escape from the Corona virus crisis. Corona virus pandemic continues to wreak havoc across states and take a toll on multiple economies.
Though Odisha has taken a proactive step well in advance even before the identification of first Corona positive case, it is struggling with several positive cases by now. The government of Odisha is aware that the State’s public health infrastructure is neither adequate nor is equipped to bear the burden of patients influx in the stage III (community transmission) spread of the virus.
The breadth and depth of such challenge is staggering in a country like India where hundreds of millions of citizens are destitute and countless millions live in packed urban areas (slums) with poor sanitation and weak public health system.
As we all are aware of the fact that, the spread of the corona virus (Covid-19) in slums will surely be faster than in the non-slum areas we seem to be tracking so far. Bhubaneswar itself is surrounded with 436 slums proliferated in shanty areas with a population of more than 4.5 lakhs of which over 1.5 lakhs are children. Overcrowding, lack of clean water, poor sanitation, social dependency, larger number of human contacts, low disease immunity of dwellers, besides poor medical facilities make for tremendous speed and size of virus transmission in these slums. It is a noted fact that, the poor quality of air in Bhubaneswar slums especially those spread across railway lines are a common cause for respiratory diseases that further reduces the respiratory tract’s ability to shut the corona virus down.
How do we discuss self-quarantine with a person sharing a tiny shanty with 8 people in a slum? How do we advise social distancing to a daily labourer? How do we advise a person to priorities hand sanitizers who struggles for one meal a day? On the other hand slums are an integral part of the city’s economy as that is where a majority of workers and domestic help stay.
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