IMPHAL, MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2016
Be a candle that gives light not a mirror that reflects
Today's Thought
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a
single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde.
UNC has delivered its point
No point in prolonging blockade
Don’t know if the ongoing economic
blockade will convince the State Government not to declare Sadar Hills and Jiribam
as full fledged districts. What however is
clear is that the blockade has sent prices
of all essential commodities sky rocketing.
So while petrol is being sold anywhere
between Rs 200 and Rs 300 per litre in the
black market, potato is being sold at above
Rs 30 per kg. A kg of onion is now being
sold at above Rs 60 per kg while a filled
LPG cylinder is being sold at above Rs
2200 in the black. How about life saving
drugs ? Or say anti-BP drugs and those on
medicines to control diabetes ? As the
Committee for Joint Naga Civil Societies,
Delhi put it, the United Naga Council is not
a criminal organisation. Everyone will agree
with this observation, but then the present
economic blockade it has imposed definitely borders on the criminal. This is a
point which should be acknowledged by
all. How else does one explain the extreme
difficulties the common people are being
forced to face ? There is no indication
that the blockade will be rolled back any
moment and this is what is worrying. And
it is not only the lack of essential commodities that is worrying but the seeds of
divide that have been sown. The official
reason for the blockade is against any
design of the State Government to grant
district status to Sadar Hills and Jiribam,
but in many ways, it has been interpreted
as being imposed against the people, the
people who have settled in the valley area
and this is what is worrying. The counter
blockade that has been imposed at different places in the valley area should explain
this point.
The UNC has already made its stand
clear and prolonging the suffering of the
common people certainly does not make
any sense. Its strong stand against granting district status to Sadar Hills and Jiribam
has been made known and it would be in
the fitness of things to take its protest or
stand to a different plane. For too long
the people have been made to suffer on
the Sadar Hills issue. Remember the more
than 100 days blockade in 2011 when the
Sadar Hills District Demand Committee
imposed the blockade to press home the
demand that Sadar Hills be upgraded to
the status of a district. So either way it
has been the people who have always
been at the receiving end of this contentious issue. It is here the State
Government may also be questioned on
why it is pussy footing the issue. The
massive mandate the Congress received in
the 2012 Assembly election has been rendered meaningless. Time for the State
Government to take some tough decisions.
It is also apparent that Delhi will not step
in anytime soon, citing one technical reason
or the other and this where the
State needs as many lifelines as possible.
At the moment the State Government has
turned its eyes to the Imphal-Jiribam highway and it is a pity that attention is paid
to this stretch along when the State is
under siege. Roll back the blockade. The
people have suffered enough.
Demonetizing or
antagonizing
Salil Gewali
A gunshot that kills a frightening tiger in the forest can also
kill a harmless dear or duck if the shooter is unskilled. Exactly
the same thing is happening now. Just imagine the catastrophe
faced by our poverty-stricken folks vis-a-vis the rich after
sudden demonetization. While the rich are finding too tough
to reconcile themselves with the bombshell announced by PM
Modi the poor have not been less persecuted. No doubt our
Prime Minister, embodiment of sacrifice and patriotism, has
seen the pain of the poor first hand but this time he has quite
failed to feel the agonies of the downtrodden. There are
various kind of hardships being experienced by our villagers.
Many from the remote areas are having tough time to acquaint
themselves with the nitty-gritty of the bank. They never had
imagined that their hard-earned money will one day be less
useful than a foolscap paper. It’s often reported that illiterate
farmers have to walk hours to reach a place where banks
locate and most of them have just returned home in the
evening empty handed. Some unlucky ones have witnessed
the wrath of fussy bankers who patter out hard terms and
conditions before handing over a single Rs 2000 or 2500.
Unlike European countries India is an underdeveloped
country where the major populace do not know the basic
utilities of bank. They feel that money kept at home is far safer
than the bank.
Again, how useful are Rs 2,000 bank notes when smaller
notes like Rs 100 and Rs 500 are not available? Show me
a foolish shop owner who will return 13 nos of Rs 100/
- by accepting a Rs 2000 note for groceries amounting Rs
700/-? No one is willing to accept this big note.
Well, we don’t disagree that the government’s
demonetarization plan is praiseworthy but the preparation to
meet the anticipated challenges is dismally poor. Phew, the
scissors of demonetization have cut the wallets of the rich but
they also have pierced deeply into the heart of the poor. Now
we badly wish that demonetization does not become a bitter
pill of antagonization.
-YOUNG THOUGHTSBirkarnelzelzit Thiyam
Do you sometimes get mad
with your own life? Sometimes
you feel that you brain is not
working out for any plans and
you feel like you are born
foolish. Life is not always
about looking for plans, it’s
just about trusting yourself,
taking a deep breath and see
what happens. Don’t busy
your mind by hearing all those
voices telling you that, “You
can’t do it.” There is someone
inside you; your heart, telling
you that, “You can do it,” listen to him only.
A follower and a leader can’t be same like sun and moon
or mirror and candle. Be a candle that gives light not a
mirror that reflects; be you to live as you. You will start
valuing your life when you accept that you are mortal, you
should always remember that you can cross the ocean when
you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. With this
word ‘courage’ I do not equate with Bollywood heroes
who fights with 100 people alone, it all about quite voice
inside you, telling you between the tears, “I will do again
tomorrow, I won’t give up.”
People may scare you with their experiences of not
being able to do it, don’t be scared, don’t feel down. We
see things not as they are but as we are. They are weak
that’s why their obstacles are huge, but if you are strong,
your obstacles will be small.
Sometimes you are damn low thinking you missed or
lost the sight of the path to success. You keep searching
for the right path or road to destination. If you find it, you
are going towards your grave or going for becoming a
worker in building someone’s success. The road to success
is not a path you find but it’s the trail that you blazed or
created.
You keep looking for excuses in life, you keep finding
excuse for why you cannot do, and you keep post ponding.
Today you will feel so late or so early to start something
but trust me, you need to start right now because after a
year from now, you will scold yourself for why you had
not started today. You are delaying in the name of waiting
for the right time.
When your best chocolate is surrounded by ants, you
still try to take off those ants, because you love the chocolate. Same as that, you won’t care for your obstacles when
you love your goal. Trust me; obstacles are things a person
see when he takes his eyes off his goal.
Most of the class toppers asked, “What is white?” to the
teachers, but feels that they got the answer when the teacher
tells them that white is white. There are some last benchers
who ask, “Why white is white?” They are the ones who
invent impossibles. Don’t stop asking questions, your
friends might laugh at you today but they will one day tell
everyone that you were once his classmate.
You can be what you think, what you think is what you
dream, to be what you dream, stop following your dream,
chase them and hunt them right now. Be what you are
always? Don’t act good or change, thinking that first impression is the last impression, if someone feels bad on
seeing you or meeting you for the first time, don’t give a
damn because he just judged a book by its cover.
To make it so easy, something we are tired of hearing,
“Don’t give up, and rise up as you fall.” You must be tired
hearing the word rise up, let me make it simple, push the
ground down, push your enemy down, you will rise. And
remember, pushing down and pulling down is different.
If I have to tell you a small story of success, then I will
go with; I won’t do it, I can’t do it, I want to do it, how
do I do it? I will try to do it, I can do it, I will do it and
at last, I did it.
Stop living in fear, trust me, life is too short, no time
for living in fear. When you are surrounded by walls, stop
leaning on the wall and cry, just start punching it.
(The writer is based in Canada. He can be reached at
[email protected]; Facebook –
Birkarnelzelzit – Young Thoughts; Twitter –
Birkarnelzelzit, INSTAGRAM – Birkarnal)
Inclusive society for sustainable future
Ranjan K Baruah
Out of 7 billion people
around the world, over 1 billion people have some form
of disability, that’s 1 in 7.
There are more than 100 million disabled persons are
children and children with
disabilities are almost four
times more likely to experience
violence
than
non-disabled children. It is
interesting to know that 80%
of all people with disabilities
live in a developing country
and 50% of disabled persons
cannot afford health care. So
far 153 countries signed the
Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities.
These facts tells us how important is to take up the issue
and work for solution. I
have been discussing an issue which is related to
disability in all my youth
programmes. Whenever I
talk of education as career
then I mention about special
education and its importance.
We must make a society in-
clusive of all where every
human being could get their
rights.
A disability is a condition
or function judged to be significantly impaired relative to
the usual standard of an individual of their group. The
term is often used to refer to
individual functioning, including physical impairment,
sensory impairment, cognitive impairment, intellectual
impairment, mental illness,
and various types of chronic
disease. This usage has been
described by some disabled
people as being associated
with a medical model of disability.
Persons with disabilities,
“the world’s largest minority”, have generally poorer
health, lower education
achievements, fewer economic opportunities and
higher rates of poverty than
people without disabilities.
This is largely due to the lack
of services available to them
(like information and communications
technology
(ICT), justice or transportation) and the many obstacles
they face in their everyday
lives. These obstacles can
take a variety of forms, including those relating to the
physical environment, or
those resulting from legislation or policy, or from
societal attitudes or discrimination.
Every year 3rd December
is observed as International
Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD). The theme
for this year’s International
Day is “Achieving 17 Goals
for the Future We Want”.
This theme notes the recent
adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) and the role of these
goals in building a more inclusive and equitable world
for persons with disabilities.
On this day message Secretary-General of United
Nations Ban Ki-moon has
said that “Let us work together for the full and equal
participation of persons with
disabilities in an inclusive
and sustainable world that
embraces humanity in all its
diversity.”
What is important is to
have barrier free environment.
Evidence
and
experience shows that when
barriers to their inclusion are
removed and persons with
disabilities are empowered to
participate fully in societal
life, their entire community
benefits. The Convention on
the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD) recognizes that the existence of
barriers constitutes a central
component of disability. Under
the
Convention,
disability is an evolving concept that “results from the
interaction between persons
with
impairments
and
attitudinal and environmental
barriers that hinder their full
and effective participation in
society on an equal basis
with others.”
Accessibility and inclusion of persons with
disabilities are fundamental
rights recognized by the
Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities and
are not only objectives, but
also pre-requisites for the enjoyment of other rights. It is
also responsibility of each
and every one of us to be a
voice and speak for the rights
of the people with special
needs. Let us work together
for the full and equal participation of persons with
disabilities in an inclusive
and sustainable future that
embraces humanity in all its
diversity.
(With direct inputs from
UN publication and feedback
may
be
sent
to
[email protected])
‘Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies’
Shobha Shukla - CNS (Citizen News Service)
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your
strength lies" are the immortal words of Saint Mother Teresa,
which sum up what Dr Kuldeep Singh Sachdeva asserts to
hasten the pace of progress for a disease-free India. Dr KS
Sachdeva has healed thousands of patients in a tertiary level
hospital in India’s capital Delhi, has served an illustrious
inning at India's national tuberculosis programme and is now
serving as Deputy Director General at the national AIDS
programme in India.
He spoke with CNS (Citizen News Service) at the sidelines of the 9th National Conference of AIDS Society of India
(ASICON 2016). This interview is part of CNS Inspire series
– featuring people who have decades of experience in health
and development, and learning from them what went well and
not-so-well and how can these learnings shape the responses
for sustainable development over the next decade.
One who can move mountains starts with the little stones
Wisdom of Confucius has only gained relevance as ages
whizzed by Dr KS Sachdeva served as a senior clinician in
a tertiary level hospital in Delhi for almost two decades. But
a small quirk of fate, got him involved with Pulse Polio
programme of Delhi state government and thus ushered his
long inning in public health. It was not so easy for a doctor
who thrived on curing patients, but persistence paid off well
when major benefits to public health started appearing after
years of efforts.
“I realized that the public health work is equally challenging and difficult to implement on the ground – as difficult as
making a difficult diagnosis in a clinic – and also as interesting
and enthralling as clinical medicine can be! One might be
treating a thousand patients in clinical practice but one good
decision at administrative or public health level can benefit and
save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. As years
passed I gained confidence in public health policy making,
making a difference and delivering things on the ground” said
Dr KS Sachdeva.
Simple managerial processes helped save millions
“One of the things that satisfy me when I look back is
when we developed the essential drug list and essential list of
surgical consumables for the government of Delhi, and then
carried out procurement. Through a little simplification of the
managerial process of procurement of drugs and surgical
consumables, the cost to the health system came down by
40%” said Dr Sachdeva sharing this pivotal incident which
took place almost 15 years back. This saving means that the
government can serve more people with the same resource
allocation. The cost of procurement was almost INR 500
crores at that time. So a 40% saving translated into savings
of over INR 200 crores (INR 2 billion). “Back then the
shortage of drugs we used to see in Delhi government dispensaries and hospitals actually become non-existent because
of the essential drug programme” he added.
Strengthening India's laboratory capacity to detect drug
resistance
Soon after entering the public health arena from clinical
domain, Dr Sachdeva moved to the Ministry of Health and
Family Welfare of Government of India and joined the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP). “When I
had joined RNTCP, the programme catered only to patients of
drug-sensitive TB and patients of drug-resistant TB were not
attended at all. So we began rolling out the programme for
drug-resistant TB way back in 2007,” shared Dr Sachdeva.
Accurately diagnosing drug-resistant TB and treating people with effective drugs are some of the essential components
of programmatic management of drug-resistant TB. But in
2007, very few laboratories existed in India that could ably
test drug resistance.
These laboratories are technically complex and financially
resource intensive to establish. These laboratories are biosafety level III (BSL-III) laboratories where solid, liquid
cultures and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) Line Probe
Assays and other tests are done for drug resistant TB.
“One major challenge was that in 2007 there were hardly
any laboratories that could detect drug resistant TB. So our
major thrust was in developing infrastructure for programmatic management of drug-resistant TB (PMDT). Between
2007 and 2016, close to 650 molecular diagnostics facilities
(almost one in each district); 50 Line Probe Assays (LPAs)
laboratories, about 40 odd liquid culture laboratories, and 50
odd solid culture laboratories have been established in the
country. The number of patients of drug-resistant TB who
have cumulatively been put on treatment is over 125,000. Had
we not started this programme back then, and not expanded
it in an exponential way, we would not have been able to
address the challenge and difficulties of these [drug resistant
TB] patients today. Through our treatment for drug-resistant
TB alone we have saved 60,000 - 70,000 lives, improved
quality of life and reduced suffering of the patients' family,”
shared Dr Sachdeva.
Testing TB patients for HIV was vital for public health
TB continues to be a lead killer of people living with HIV
(PLHIV). If latent TB (not active TB disease) or active TB
disease is diagnosed early in PLHIV, then TB can be treated.
TB is curable. Testing TB patients for HIV makes enormous
public health sense and is one of the key components of TBHIV collaborative activities.
“Initially only those TB patients who reported a high risk
behaviour were offered HIV testing in the national TB programme. But in 2007-2008 we stressed on making the
coordination between TB and HIV a more holistic one and
that is how we began offering HIV testing to every TB
patient. Operational research studies done in 2014-2015 show
that if we offer HIV screening to even those people who are
presumed to have TB or are symptomatic for TB, it results in
a good yield of new HIV cases, thus leading to very early
diagnosis at times. So we introduced the policy of providerinitiated testing and counselling (PITC) of presumptive TB
patients and diagnosed TB patients for HIV. PITC yield of
new HIV cases is over 2% to HIV programmes, which is the
highest percentage contribution compared to other such initiatives in key populations for HIV,” shared Dr Sachdeva.
People testing positive for HIV seek care from existing government facilities offering HIV related care and ART.
These small changes that we made in our existing systems,
resulting in positive public health outcomes, do satisfy me and
uplift my morale too,” reflects Dr Sachdeva.
‘Change is never easy’
There indeed are complex challenges confronting our health
programmes. Ushering a positive change in public health is
not easy. Whether it is HIV or TB or other specific health
programmes in India, one of the challenges which people
often refer to is engaging private healthcare sector. Despite
innumerable efforts to engage private sector in public health,
successes have been sketchy, few and far in between. Solving
this riddle continues to haunt us till date and the blame game
is on, at times, rightly so.
As the old adage goes: We do not grow when things are
easy; we grow when we face challenges. Dr Sachdeva feels
this is an area where a lot remains to be done to optimize
public health outcomes. “We did realize that a lot of patients
are seeking treatment from outside the programme [RNTCP].
So we began initiatives to involve the private sector to be able
to reach these patients. One of these initiatives was standardizing treatment options, which are common for both public
and private sector. That is why we developed an enabling
'Standards of TB Care in India' document, which talks of
common standards across public and private sector. It also
helped us in gaining the confidence of the private sector. We
also made TB notifications mandatory – but it is not truly
mandatory as it is an executive order and practitioners are
encouraged to notify TB patients so that the programme has
a better sense of TB load within a community and we can
address it optimally. When I look back, I realize that we have
not been very effective in involving the private sector on scale.
This is one area we need to lay more emphasis on-- involvement of private sector in TB programme, and same holds true
for HIV programme” said Dr Sachdeva.
“At this conference [ASICON 2016] I interacted with 56 drug manufacturers and tried to get a sense of their annual
sales with the intent to have an idea of the number of patients
outside of the National AIDS programme. It roughly translates to about 100,000 patients who do not seek HIV care
from National AIDS programme. There could be many reasons for this– may be they do not want to visit government
facility or be recognized as having HIV.
(To be contd)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Nagas brinkmanship is pushing others to the brink
Sir,
The Naga organizations
are really hard working and
determined unlike other valley organizations. The
reported statement of Mr L
Shiro, Convenor of committee for Joint Naga Civil
Societies, Delhi, (Resolve
Blockade issue: Nagas in
Delhi, TSE dated 4th Dec)
is very interesting. The protest at Delhi was to lambast
the Govt of Manipur for taking action against the
president of an organization
which enforced economic
blockade on a national highway for more than one
month, thereby causing
hardship to the people of the
State including the Nagas
who settle in various parts
or districts of Manipur. Being in the political capital
Delhi, they can not selectively plead ignorance of the
laws and Supreme Court and
other High Courts judgements on the subject, for
they are well informed and
well heeled persons even
though they are ST.
However, one wishes
that they have the courage to
tell the truth. Why did not
they tell the world that the
present economic blockade is
a pre-emptied strike to block
the State Government from
upgrading two subdivisions,
one of which is under Autonomous District Council,
to full fledged districts for
administrative convenience.
Why don't they let the people know that Jiribam
subdivision is not contagious
with the Imphal East district
to which it belongs and
separated by more than hundred kilometres. As it is the
anticipated notification had
not been issued in deference
to the wish of the president
of the UNC. That is fair
enough. But yet the president arrogantly enforced the
blockade and continue till
now without any justification. Is it a sign of maturity
and civilized behaviour?
Just because in the past the
then president of the organi-
zation was let scot free for
whatever reasons the then
Govt might have, it does not
mean that it can be repeated
again and again to its pleasure. It may be true that the
Central Government might
have assured the Nagas their
promised land, but it is not
yet done. In the so-called
Naga districts there are settlements of different tribes/
communities. Do they raise
any objection to your demands? So how does it
matter if a few visages are
in the proposed districts.
Are they going to lose their
identities? Why don't cross
the bridge when it comes?
The lives of thousand people had been nipped in your
ethical cleansing war. The
Constitution which the organization is fond of
quoting also guarantees the
same rights to others. Your
brinkmanship is pushing
others to the brink.
Yours sincerely,
AD Singh,
Keishamthong.