There is not a single toilet in the village, where 80 people are still suffering from diarrhea. The locals are forced to defecate in the pond nearby and secretly in other people's fields. But so far, only 9 people have had their stool tested.
It has been revealed that the entire Sada village of Chhinnamasta Rural Municipality-5 in Saptari, where three people have died due to diarrhea, is without toilets. Buchan Sada, 33, from this village, which is home to 90 extremely poor families, has lost three members of his family to diarrhea in a span of eight days.
There is not a single toilet in the village, where 80 people are still suffering from diarrhea. The locals are forced to defecate in the ponds nearby and in other people's fields.
Women are even more forced to get up early in the morning to defecate. 'Sometimes, when I wake up late, I have to wander around looking for bushes,' 23-year-old Rani Sada lamented. Children defecate near their homes. Ghuran Sada, 50, who has been earning a living in Punjab and Mumbai, India, said that they have not been able to build a toilet due to financial constraints.
One of the three taps installed for drinking water is still submerged due to the lack of drainage of rainwater. The other two taps are also muddy. They have been using the taps for drinking water, bathing, washing clothes and washing dishes. The narrow road in the village is muddy, making it difficult to walk.
The village municipality, which learned about the death of three people in the village due to diarrhea only last Friday, has distributed soap, nail cutters, sanitizers and other materials, but has not yet cleaned it up. The garbage piles up in places in the village and stinks, and even though it has been two days since the rains stopped, some courtyards still look like fields prepared for planting rice.
The health post in Kochabkhari (Lokram), which is just a kilometer away from the village, is operational up to the birthing center, but the road to it is muddy, so an ambulance cannot reach there. It is also difficult to reach on foot.
‘Our goal is to deliver 18 people every year, but since the ambulance has not come here, only two people have given birth in the last three months,’ said Senior Ahab Alok Ranjan Jha, head of the health post.
The condition of the Shri Dalit National Primary School Lokhram, established in 2061 BS by the Sada community living on public land by collecting donations, is also in a bad state. Before that, a multi-classroom (four classes) school was being run in two rooms, but the Madhesh Provincial Government built a two-room school building there in 2081, but it is incomplete.
134 children from the Sada community are studying in that school up to grade 4. But the building is not child-friendly, and there are no toilets or toilets. The toilets in the old school building are also dilapidated. The school, which has a staff of five, has only four teachers in relief, PCF and child development.
5 patients including ward members admitted to hospital
Even though 80 people in the village have been affected by diarrhea, only 9 have been tested for RDT (Rapid Diagnostic Test) so far. 4 of them have tested positive for cholera (Vibrio cholerae), said Senior Ahab Dipendra Prasad Yadav, head of the rural municipality's health department.
'We will start work including sanitation and water testing from tomorrow,' he said, 'Even if the affected do not provide a stool sample, there is a problem in conducting RDT.' So far, we have given samples to 23 people, but only 11 have given samples, and now two more are yet to be tested.'
According to him, ward member Arhulia Devi Sada, 65, and Suraj Sada's 3-year-old son Manish, who tested positive in RDT, Shiv Kumar Sada's 7-year-old son Aman, and Subodh Sada's 30-year-old wife Rekha Devi Sada are admitted to Gajendra Narayan Singh Hospital in Rajbiraj.
Ward member Arhulia, who was suffering from diarrhea, was admitted on Sunday night. Their health condition is normal, said the hospital's medical superintendent Dr. Prakash Sah.
Rural Municipality Chairman Bidyananda Chaudhary said that most of the people of the municipality are economically and socially backward, so toilets have not been built everywhere. 'There are still no toilets in many areas of the municipality,' he said, 'toilets cannot be built everywhere with the municipality's sole resources.' We have collaborated with donor agencies to build toilets in all areas, now we will build them.'
The diarrhea that began on Kartik 2 resulted in the deaths of Buchan's one-year-old son Sanjeev on the 6th, his 66-year-old father Laxman on the 11th, and his 4-year-old daughter Ragini on the 14th.
