Husband Died, She is Crippled, Two Daughters Clueless

Fluorosis keeps spreading and helpless people of Nuapada continue succumbing to dreaded misery

The 300 rupees of ‘widow pension’ is the only income for the 38 years old Prema Behera and her two daughters of Karlakot village in Nuapada distict. “My husband became crippled in a young age and later died. I have also become fully crippled since about four years,” saya Prema. Apart from the small house in ramshackle state, they have only 0.7 acres of land property. “We cannot cultivate. Our uncle, brother of our father Fakira, cultivates the land and provides us paddy,” says Jamuma, elder adolescent daughter of Prema. 

Prema looks healthy, but can't do anything

When Prema came to Karlakot village after her marriage in 1996, she was a pillar of the family. “Apart from household chores, I was regularly going to forest to collect firewood, going for wage labour and collecting minor forest harvests to augment her familly’s income,” recollects Prema. But good times ended quite soon for them. “Within a span of just three years my husband started feeling pain in body, became crippled and then died,” says Prema.  Soon after, Prema started showing the same symptoms as her husband. “Brother of my husband has helped us a lot. He took me to the biggest hospital of the region in Burla, about 300 kilometers away. When the problems did not heal we went to Visakhapatnam city in Andhra Pradesh state for treatment. There, doctor diagnosed the disease as ‘fluorosis’,” informs Prema. The doctor informed them that it is because of the water they drink. Since 2012, Prema has lost capacity to walk and is mostly confined to bed. The two adolescent daughters not only take care of her but also look after the household.

Prema gets a ‘widow pension’ of 300 rupees a month. Even though she has been diagnosed with severe skeletal fluorosis and is completely crippled she is yet to get pension for physically handicapped person or any other special pension like the pension of 1,500 rupees per month provided by Andhra Pradesh government for fluorosis affected people.

The two very young daughters of Prema are deeply pained by the sufferings of their mother. They have also seen their father suffer and die. They also see many others in their village with similar woes. “We know that water is causing that problem. But we are unable to do anything. The pipe water supply project often gets defunct. Many families are purchasing water from a neighboring which has RO filter or have purchased a filter themselves. We do not have money to do that,” says Tulasi, the younger daughter of Prema.

The past decade has been very cruel to this family and the future does not look bright either. Various development programmes and social security measures has failed to reach the most affected people, especially the poor.