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WFP Food Responsible for Diarrhea Epidemic
By KTM Metro Reporter in Kathmandu
Finally, Prime Minister Madhav Nepal and His Health Minister Umakanta Chaudhary could breathe freely after the Informal Service Center (INSEC) affiliated to the CPN-UML has found the foodstuff distributed by the WFP as a scapegoat for the cause of the diarrhea epidemic in mid-western Nepal. INSEC president Subodh Raj Pyakurel has said that the WFP has kept the rice and other foodstuff in the open stores for months causing the foodstuff to spoil and such spoiled foodstuff has led to the spread of diarrhea among the people in the district. Mr. Pyakurel has concluded that the main cause of the spread of disease is food; the WFP has still been storing the foodstuff in open places at Dasera, Garkakot, Chaukha of Ragda and Nayekbada according to the news published in the state-run newspaper ‘The Risng Nepal’ of August 4, 2009. However, the WFP Nepalgunj official Moti Thapa has claimed that the diarrhea epidemic is not due to the foodstuff provided by the WFP, as the WFP has provided pure and healthy food to the people suffering from the acute shortage of foodstuffs.
The state-run newspaper ‘Gorkhapatra’ of August 5, 2009 has reported that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has made public in Lalitpur on August 4, 2009 its report on the monitoring of the diarrhea epidemic in the 13 districts of mid-western Nepal; the report says that the treatment of patients, disease control activities, and distribution of relief materials have been centered around the district headquarters; medics and prescription drugs have not reached the villages of the remote areas, yet; medics have returned back due to the lack of coordination; incentive has not been provided to the medics sent to work in the disease-affected areas. NHRC also has urged the government to declare the disease-affected areas as the health-crisis areas.
