KUMARHATTI: The health department time to time health camps to monitor the situation notwithstanding, the migrant labourers in this area is more prone to various contagious diseases. The maximum number of patients in TB Sanatorium, Dharampur 4-km from here and nearby Leprosy Hospital, Mandhodhar was consisted of migrant labourers. The same is the case with children of labourers who lack proper care and suffer from various diseases.
The town and its surrounding area has good chunk of migrant labourers population mostly Nepalese who are involved in contract farming, selling local vegetable produce along highway and doing daily wages in construction and other work.
Inquires revealed that the unhygienic living conditions and poor food diet were main reason behind the problem. The most common disease among migrant labourers’ children was measles. On an average every third child of migrant labourers was seemed to be hit by the measles. What makes the matters worse is the tendency among labourers to rush to quacks for treatment. The quacks may provide relief for a short term but they harmed in the long term.
The use of unsafe water for want of quality drinking water, inferior quality of food and lack of nutrition knowledge are the main reasons behind poor health of migrant labourers, remarks a doctor in the local health center.
Ironically the migrant labourers are even hard to convince about administer the free pulse polio drops to their wards, remarked another doctor. Their poor economic conditions also prevent them from getting normal medical treatment, doctor points out.
The tuberculosis is a most common disease among migrant labourers who work and live in very unhealthy conditions, says a doctor at TB Sanatorium, Dharampur. Moreover the labourers usually keep shifting their abode depending upon the availability of work. This lead to the failure to maintain the minimum standard of hygienic living standard, the doctor maintains.
At a district-level weeklong leprosy elimination campaign launched by the Solan District Leprosy Society few years back, all 17 cases were happened to be those of the migrant labourers.
In order to check the disease and giving full course of treatment, on-the-spot medical facilities have been ensured for labourers but their shifting of places regularly make them more vulnerable to the disease, asserts in-charge of Leprosy Hospital, Mandhodhar.
Interestingly the most of the labourers bring with them diseases of their respective areas that are quite uncommon in hilly areas, points out a local social worker.
