The Tsunami reconstruction: Rebuilding lives in tamil nadu
Until December 26, 2004, “tsunami” was a term unheard of in the common lexicon along the long coast of Tamil Nadu. Today, even the unlettered utter the word often, with awe.
The giant waves that shook the coastlines of Asia on that day left behind a trail of destruction of epic proportions. Reconstruction and rehabilitation required an equally massive effort. For over three years, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) launched rehabilitation projects, with a huge flow of funds from national and international agencies.
The spontaneous response for relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts from NGOs and donor agencies has few parallels. With nearly 2.5 lakh affected people being taken to temporary shelters in Nagapattinam and Cuddalore districts in the first six months, the coordinated relief measures prevented any outbreak of water-borne diseases, which in itself is considered an achievement.
On the fourth anniversary of the black day, as one looks back on the amount of work that has been done, there are several lessons to be learnt from the efforts made for disaster mitigation, capacity building, reconstruction, habitat development, community participation and ecological protection. The good practices that have emerged could be replicated elsewhere and the pitfalls avoided.
“The lessons are important to inform government policies on housing, disaster mitigation and approaches to pro-poor and equitable infrastructure,” says Pieter Bult, Deputy Country Director, United Nations Development Programme, India, in the foreword to the UNDP document “Tsunami – Lessons for Habitat Development”. The document lists out a series of case studies in the post-tsunami reconstruction scenario. Stakeholders should study the aspects of people-centric planning, environment friendly options and focus on a habitat development approach while designing and implementing development and reconstruction plans, he adds.
The control exercised by the government over the activity of building permanent shelters, in terms of site selection, allocation of villages and setting of specifications, has been welcomed by many agencies.
“The public-private partnership initiative in building permanent shelters has proved to be a successful model,” says R. Bhakther Solomon, chief executive officer of the NGO, Development Promotion Group (DPG). However, cost escalation has been one of the factors that these NGOs have had to contend with.
The DPG was one of the NGOs involved in immediate relief efforts and, subsequently, in long-term reconstruction initiatives. It built 822 houses in Vilunthamavadi, Kameshwaram, Vanavanmahadevi and Vellappallem in Nagapattinam district and Keela Tiruchendur and Mappillaioorani in Tuticorin district. The organisation also built several temporary shelters and community halls in several villages. It also focussed on the sustainable development of the affected communities.
“The first task was to organise the victim communities into self-reliant self-help groups [SHGs] to inculcate in them the habit of saving, thereby preventing exploitation of the victims by moneylenders,” says Solomon.
Getting the affected communities back into their original professions meant making available substantial resources in the form of new equipment for fisherfolk and rehabilitation of land in the case of farmers. To this end, the DPG organised the distribution of fibre glass boats, engines and nets to fishermen.
Another task taken up simultaneously was providing alternative means of livelihood, which meant giving skills training to different groups in the community.
The biggest challenge was the attitude of the victims, who, seeing the huge volume of relief resources pouring in, developed a “dependence mentality”, observes Solomon.
To overcome this problem, the organisation promoted several income-generating projects and vocational/ skill-development centres in various villages.
- Frontline
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
2MILLION BENEFITTED BY TSUNAMI PROJECTS!! EXCEPT NESL VICTIMS!!!???
Two million benefitted by tsunami projects
Four years after the tsunami, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Sri Lanka (IFRC) together with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS) has completed 223 tsunami recovery projects across the country, benefiting nearly two million people, a release said.
According to the IFRC's Four Year Progress Report, the most significant achievement has been in the area of permanent housing. The Red Cross has supported the construction of 22,665 houses.
By the first quarter of 2009, 32,886 houses will be built with Red Cross funding. This represents 27 per cent of the 120,000 houses damaged or destroyed by the tsunami, it said.
"We have adopted an integrated approach linking houses with water and sanitation, health services, roads, income sources and other essential factors," Sri Lanka Red Cross Society President Jagath Abeysinghe said.
A nursing school with 31 hospitals and a health centre have been built or rehabilitated under an agreement with the Health Ministry to reconstruct 69 health facilities across the country.
Over 200,000 people now have access to an improved water source. Pipeline projects in the Galle, Matara and Ampara districts have connected new resettlement sites and surrounding villages to the main water supply for the first time.
Major investment has also been made to restore and improve the livelihoods of the tsunami affected.
The Red Cross has completed approximately 40 livelihood projects under which 36,460 households were supported to recover, strengthen the diversify their livelihoods.
R. Janaka Chaminda from Beruwela was once depended on fishing for his livelihood.
The Red Cross assisted to rebuild his home with seeds, tools and agricultural training to start a market garden.
With 10 perches to cultivate, Janaka now grows 16 types of fruit and vegetables. "This is my livelihood now," he says as he proudly shows off his garden and new home.
"I grow spinach, mint, pomegranates and watermelons."
"We are now shifting towards long team development programmes in areas such as disaster management and community based First Aid which strengthen the capacity of local people to respond to future crisis," Paul Emes, Head of delegation for the IFRC said.
dailynews.lk
Four years after the tsunami, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Sri Lanka (IFRC) together with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS) has completed 223 tsunami recovery projects across the country, benefiting nearly two million people, a release said.
According to the IFRC's Four Year Progress Report, the most significant achievement has been in the area of permanent housing. The Red Cross has supported the construction of 22,665 houses.
By the first quarter of 2009, 32,886 houses will be built with Red Cross funding. This represents 27 per cent of the 120,000 houses damaged or destroyed by the tsunami, it said.
"We have adopted an integrated approach linking houses with water and sanitation, health services, roads, income sources and other essential factors," Sri Lanka Red Cross Society President Jagath Abeysinghe said.
A nursing school with 31 hospitals and a health centre have been built or rehabilitated under an agreement with the Health Ministry to reconstruct 69 health facilities across the country.
Over 200,000 people now have access to an improved water source. Pipeline projects in the Galle, Matara and Ampara districts have connected new resettlement sites and surrounding villages to the main water supply for the first time.
Major investment has also been made to restore and improve the livelihoods of the tsunami affected.
The Red Cross has completed approximately 40 livelihood projects under which 36,460 households were supported to recover, strengthen the diversify their livelihoods.
R. Janaka Chaminda from Beruwela was once depended on fishing for his livelihood.
The Red Cross assisted to rebuild his home with seeds, tools and agricultural training to start a market garden.
With 10 perches to cultivate, Janaka now grows 16 types of fruit and vegetables. "This is my livelihood now," he says as he proudly shows off his garden and new home.
"I grow spinach, mint, pomegranates and watermelons."
"We are now shifting towards long team development programmes in areas such as disaster management and community based First Aid which strengthen the capacity of local people to respond to future crisis," Paul Emes, Head of delegation for the IFRC said.
dailynews.lk
2004-TSUNAMI VICTIMS : MISERY FOR 4 YEARS! SOME STORIES!!!
Waves of tsunami memories
Today, the Daily Mirror features 22-year-old Munira’s story, who witnessed the 2004 tsunami tragedy first hand during her holidays in Sri Lanka. An Arabic national, Munira lost her parents to the tsunami and returned to her country two weeks later with her elder brother and younger sister, where they conducted a small prayer in remembrance of her parents. Four years later, Munira has returned to the island, to visit the coastal areas of Kalutara where her parents died. Visiting the beach, she said she remembered the tragedy as it had happened yesterday.
Sunday December 26th, 2004, the day after Christmas, dawned bright and clear. The sea was calm and inviting and tourists and locals alike were enjoying the holiday scene, appreciating the hot weather, relieved to be away from the stormy cold snow in the west.
Many who had just celebrated Christams the day before, had been sleeping. After all it was a Sunday and the festive mood was still all around.
I, myself was in the south that morning, away from the busy city of Colombo which I had visited a few days ago. Booked in a hotel in Kalutara, I had just arrived in the area with my parents and siblings two days before and was hoping to return to my country the next day. However, little did I realise that the day would be the longest in my life. And little did I know that it would be the last I see of my parents.
Things that morning seemed calm. But when looking at the sea from the hotel balcony, all did not seem right. The water had moved away from the shore, revealing a lot of sand and the water in certain areas in the sea had turned into a darkish grey – a colour which I had never seen before.
The few who were strolling along the beach also kept starring at the sea. In ceratin areas some of the visitors said they even saw bubbles on the surface of water, as if something was breathing underneath.
Around 9.30 in the morning everything changed. Without warning a massive wave struck. It was big, bigger than anyone had seen. But later the sea receded altogether and many thought it was over. But little did we know that the water was preparing for another massive wave, even bigger than the first the people had just seen.
Many thought the end of the world was coming as they saw the sea they had known all their lives, disappear. They ran to the expanding beach. But the sea came back, back with such force, volume and height that it took people, houses, boats, everything in its path with it. It had left a trail of destruction in its wake.
My parents had been asleep in their ground floor room when the tsunami struck. My siblings were a little away from me and my brother screamed saying we should run to the fourth floor of the room. We did, along with several others. Once we reached the top, my brother wanted to rush back down to get my parents. He could not do as two floors of the hotel was already under water.
Then someone screamed again from the third floor saying another wave was coming. People were screaming from all corners, some saying to save them, others saying to save their children who they could not hold on to. From the glass windows, we could see people being dragged into the waves like tiny ants rushing to an open packet of sweets.
No one could stop the water and no one could think about helping each other. Furniture, television sets, fridges, carperts, everything had just been dragged out and was seen floating in the sea. The destruction has already started.
Five hours later, my brother and I were able to move towards the ground floor. Nothing was remaining. Everything had been wiped out. My parents’ room which was accessible only after a day, was empty. They had already dissappeared into the waves.
Ten days after the tsunami was struck, the people of Sri Lanka were still trying to come to terms with what happened. My siblings and I travelled the coast road from Kalutara to Hikkaduwa and returned to Colombo, without the bodies of my parents.
From a couple of miles outside Colombo, the signs of damage were visible. Small houses and bigger tourist hotels alike were either flattened completely or so badly damaged that they would have to be demolished.
A bus looked as if it had been picked up like a useless toy and wrapped around a concrete pole, boats were at the opposite side of the road from the sea, one boat was even in the middle of the bus station. A huge dredger looked as if it had been picked by a giant hand and placed about sixty metres from the sea.
The railway line was buckled and ripped up in parts and a train completely overturned. The visible destruction went on for miles. Occasionally there were little patches on the beachfront where the houses appeared to be untouched and intact, missed by the wave.
But the damage and destruction only served as a reminder of the tragic loss of life and livelihood suffered by the people. Over 30,000 Sri Lankans lost their lives in the disaster, nearly 4,000 were missing ten days later, and 834,000 people were displaced.
The smell of death and decay was everywhere. People wore masks to try to hide the constant reminder. Hotels and restaurants which escaped damage in the towns by the tsunami were closed due to the all pervasive smell.We visited Buddhist temples where people had gone for refuge and help. The generosity of the Sri Lankan people was evidenced by the constant stream of people delivering food and clothes to those left destitute. We met one woman who had lost her three children. One minute ago they were a happy family, the next minute all gone.
Her husband was trying to hide his own sense of loss by trying to console her. He had lost his livelihood, his fishing boat and they had lost their home. These losses alone were enough to create hardship but those losses were replaceable over time. They had to come to terms with rebuilding their lives without their three children.
The sense of loss was everywhere. In Hikkaduwa, a fishing town, over 4,000 people lost their lives and communities were destroyed. The bulldozers were flattening large portions of the town. A week later it would be difficult to see where the houses were on the morning of December 26th.
There was a pitiful little pile of battered chairs, broken tables, dented pots and a few bits of clothing where the bulldozers were working the salvaged remains of hundreds of households of what was once a thriving community.
The Sri Lanka government was quick to respond in the immediate aftermath of the disaster in getting bulldozers out to clear the main roads, putting in temporary bridges where the tsunami had taken them out.
Most of the main roads were opened a few days after the disaster or diversions were in place in areas which were impassable for months. Aid and assistance was getting through.
People looked to the sea for their livelihood and their entertainment.
The sea was their friend. The sea dealt them a savage blow. The glorious beaches now stay eerily empty, the fishing boats 'parked' in places never meant for boats. Four years later. survivors have tried and have begun to rebuild their lives.
Where did they start?
Observing two-minute silence today
The government has urged the people to observe a two minute silence today, by remembering all those who perished in natural disasters in Sri Lanka over the years, especially those who perished in the 2004 tsunami.
The government has urged the entire nation to observe the silence from 9.25 to 9.27 a.m.
Special police teams have been deployed to stop traffic within the specified period and those travelling would also be requested to observe the silence.
“We want the whole nation to come together within these two minutes and remember all our brothers and sisters who died in the 2004 tragedy and all other tragedies in the country,” the police said.
Acting Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Rohana Dissanayake also made a special appeal at an event held at the Disaster Management Centre earlier this week for the nation to oblige and mark the two-minute silence.
The Minister also said the National Safety Day which is commemorated today would be held in Kandy this year.
Minister Dissanayake added that if the country was to face another natural disaster like the tsunami, arrangements were in place to respond to the crisis situation swiftly and effectively.
He observed that new communications and response systems had been implemented to cope with the disaster.
The National Safety Day comes as a result of a cabinet proposal made in May 2006, and the first event marking the day was held on December 26, 2006 in Galle.
The 2007 event followed in Ratnapura. This year's event is being held at Dharmaraja College in Kandy.
Schoolgirl's geography lesson saves family
On December 26, 2004, British schoolgirl Tilly Smith, ten-year-old, sensed something was wrong while on the beach with her family. Her mind kept going back to the geography lesson Mr. Kearney gave just two weeks before she flew out to a Thai resort with her family.
“The water was swelling and kept coming in,” recalled Penny Smith, Tilly's mother. “There was froth on it like you get on the top of a beer. The sea was like a millpond before [the swelling began].”
The Smiths, from southeast England, were celebrating Christmas at Mai Khao Beach in Phuket, southern Thailand. Deadly tsunami waves were already on their way — triggered by a massive earthquake off northern Sumatra earlier that morning.
"The beach was getting smaller and smaller," said Penny Smith, 43. "I felt compelled to look, but I didn't know what was happening. Then Tilly said she'd just studied this at school — she talked about tectonic plates and an earthquake under the sea. She got more and more hysterical. In the end she was screaming at us to get off the beach."
Tilly's father, Colin Smith, 46, said other tourists on the beach were alerted by his daughter's concerns as he took Tilly and her seven-year-old sister back to the hotel swimming pool.
Penny Smith added, "I didn't know what a tsunami was, but seeing your daughter so frightened made you think something serious must be going on."
She remembers seeing a yacht being tipped vertically in the bay. "Then it was as if the entire sea came out of the water. I was screaming, 'Run!'"
The family took refuge on the third floor of their hotel. Set well back from the shore, it withstood the surge of three tsunami waves.
"Everything went in the swimming pool — beds, palm trees, the lot," Penny Smith said. "Even if you hadn't drowned, you would have been hit by something."
If they had stayed on the beach, she believes they wouldn't have made it to safety.
In the disaster's aftermath, the Smiths said, they met people from nearby resorts who had lost whole families.
Tilly Smith left back safely for her at Danes Hill School in Oxshott, Surrey, England soon after the tsunami.
A week later, she told her geography class how the sea slowly rose and started to foam, bubble, and form whirlpools before the big waves came.
"What Tilly described as happening was exactly the same as I'd shown on a video of a tsunami that hit the Hawaiian islands [in 1946]," said Andrew F. Kearney, Tilly's geography teacher.
"She saw the consequences of not acting when something strange happens."
Kearney had many hundreds of supportive e-mails from teachers around the world since Tilly's story was first reported in Britain.
"People often underrate teaching and teachers and they feel it's important to show we can make a difference," Kearney said. (National Geographic News)
Did animals sense tsunami disaster?
Before giant waves slammed into Sri Lankan and Indian coastlines on December 26, 2004, wild and domestic animals seemed to know what was about to happen and had fled to safety.
According to eyewitnesses, the following events took place:
Elephants screamed and ran for higher ground. Dogs refused to go outdoors. Flamingos abandoned their low-lying breeding areas and zoo animals rushed into their shelters and could not be enticed to come back out.
The belief that wild and domestic animals possess a sixth sense — and know in advance when the earth was going to shake — has been around for centuries.
Wild Life experts believe animals' more acute hearing and other senses might enable them to hear or feel the earth's vibration, tipping them off to approaching disaster long before humans realise what's going on.
The massive tsunami was triggered by a sea quake of 9 on the Richter scale off the coast of Northern Sumatra island on December 26. The giant waves rolled through the Indian Ocean, killing more than 150,000 people in a dozen countries.
Relatively few animals have been reported dead, however, reviving speculation that animals somehow sense impending disaster.
Ravi Corea, President of the Sri Lanka Wild Life Conservation Society, which is based in Nutley, New Jersey, was in Sri Lanka when the massive waves struck.
He travelled later to the Patanangala beach inside Yala National Park, where some 60 visitors were washed away.
The beach was one of the worst hit areas of the 500-square-mile (1,300-square-kilometre) wild life reserve, which is home to a variety of animals, including elephants, leopards, and 130 species of birds.
Mr. Corea did not see any animal carcasses nor did the park personnel know of any, other than two water buffaloes that had died, he said.
Along India's Cuddalore coast, where thousands of people perished, the Indo-Asian News service reported that buffaloes, goats, and dogs were found unharmed.
Flamingos that breed this time of year at the Point Calimere wild life sanctuary in India flew to higher ground beforehand, the news service reported.
Accounts of strange animal behaviour have also started to surface.
About an hour before the tsunami hit, Corea said, people at Yala National Park observed three elephants running away from the Patanangala beach.
World Wild Life Fund, an organiswation that leads international efforts to protect endangered species and their habitats, has satellite collars on some of the elephants in the park.
A spokeswoman said they plan to track the elephants on that fateful day to verify whether they did move to higher ground. She doesn't know, though, when the satellite data would be downloaded and analysed.
Mr. Corea, a Sri Lankan who migrated to United States 20 years ago, said two of his friends noticed unusual animal behaviour before the tsunami.
One friend, in the southern Sri Lankan town of Dikwella, recalls bats frantically flying away just before the tsunami struck. Another friend, who lived on the coast near Galle, said his two dogs would not go for their daily run on the beach.
"They are usually excited to go on this outing," Corea said. But on this day they refused to go and most probably saved his life.
Alan Rabinowitz, director for science and exploration at the Bronx Zoo-based Wild Life Conservation Society in New York, says animals could sense impending dangers by detecting subtle or abrupt shifts in the environment.
"Earth-quakes bring vibrational changes on land and in water while storms cause electro-magnetic changes in the atmosphere," he said. "Some animals have acute sense of hearing and smell that allow them to determine something coming towards them long before humans might know that something is there."
(National Geographic News)
dailymirror.lk
Today, the Daily Mirror features 22-year-old Munira’s story, who witnessed the 2004 tsunami tragedy first hand during her holidays in Sri Lanka. An Arabic national, Munira lost her parents to the tsunami and returned to her country two weeks later with her elder brother and younger sister, where they conducted a small prayer in remembrance of her parents. Four years later, Munira has returned to the island, to visit the coastal areas of Kalutara where her parents died. Visiting the beach, she said she remembered the tragedy as it had happened yesterday.
Sunday December 26th, 2004, the day after Christmas, dawned bright and clear. The sea was calm and inviting and tourists and locals alike were enjoying the holiday scene, appreciating the hot weather, relieved to be away from the stormy cold snow in the west.
Many who had just celebrated Christams the day before, had been sleeping. After all it was a Sunday and the festive mood was still all around.
I, myself was in the south that morning, away from the busy city of Colombo which I had visited a few days ago. Booked in a hotel in Kalutara, I had just arrived in the area with my parents and siblings two days before and was hoping to return to my country the next day. However, little did I realise that the day would be the longest in my life. And little did I know that it would be the last I see of my parents.
Things that morning seemed calm. But when looking at the sea from the hotel balcony, all did not seem right. The water had moved away from the shore, revealing a lot of sand and the water in certain areas in the sea had turned into a darkish grey – a colour which I had never seen before.
The few who were strolling along the beach also kept starring at the sea. In ceratin areas some of the visitors said they even saw bubbles on the surface of water, as if something was breathing underneath.
Around 9.30 in the morning everything changed. Without warning a massive wave struck. It was big, bigger than anyone had seen. But later the sea receded altogether and many thought it was over. But little did we know that the water was preparing for another massive wave, even bigger than the first the people had just seen.
Many thought the end of the world was coming as they saw the sea they had known all their lives, disappear. They ran to the expanding beach. But the sea came back, back with such force, volume and height that it took people, houses, boats, everything in its path with it. It had left a trail of destruction in its wake.
My parents had been asleep in their ground floor room when the tsunami struck. My siblings were a little away from me and my brother screamed saying we should run to the fourth floor of the room. We did, along with several others. Once we reached the top, my brother wanted to rush back down to get my parents. He could not do as two floors of the hotel was already under water.
Then someone screamed again from the third floor saying another wave was coming. People were screaming from all corners, some saying to save them, others saying to save their children who they could not hold on to. From the glass windows, we could see people being dragged into the waves like tiny ants rushing to an open packet of sweets.
No one could stop the water and no one could think about helping each other. Furniture, television sets, fridges, carperts, everything had just been dragged out and was seen floating in the sea. The destruction has already started.
Five hours later, my brother and I were able to move towards the ground floor. Nothing was remaining. Everything had been wiped out. My parents’ room which was accessible only after a day, was empty. They had already dissappeared into the waves.
Ten days after the tsunami was struck, the people of Sri Lanka were still trying to come to terms with what happened. My siblings and I travelled the coast road from Kalutara to Hikkaduwa and returned to Colombo, without the bodies of my parents.
From a couple of miles outside Colombo, the signs of damage were visible. Small houses and bigger tourist hotels alike were either flattened completely or so badly damaged that they would have to be demolished.
A bus looked as if it had been picked up like a useless toy and wrapped around a concrete pole, boats were at the opposite side of the road from the sea, one boat was even in the middle of the bus station. A huge dredger looked as if it had been picked by a giant hand and placed about sixty metres from the sea.
The railway line was buckled and ripped up in parts and a train completely overturned. The visible destruction went on for miles. Occasionally there were little patches on the beachfront where the houses appeared to be untouched and intact, missed by the wave.
But the damage and destruction only served as a reminder of the tragic loss of life and livelihood suffered by the people. Over 30,000 Sri Lankans lost their lives in the disaster, nearly 4,000 were missing ten days later, and 834,000 people were displaced.
The smell of death and decay was everywhere. People wore masks to try to hide the constant reminder. Hotels and restaurants which escaped damage in the towns by the tsunami were closed due to the all pervasive smell.We visited Buddhist temples where people had gone for refuge and help. The generosity of the Sri Lankan people was evidenced by the constant stream of people delivering food and clothes to those left destitute. We met one woman who had lost her three children. One minute ago they were a happy family, the next minute all gone.
Her husband was trying to hide his own sense of loss by trying to console her. He had lost his livelihood, his fishing boat and they had lost their home. These losses alone were enough to create hardship but those losses were replaceable over time. They had to come to terms with rebuilding their lives without their three children.
The sense of loss was everywhere. In Hikkaduwa, a fishing town, over 4,000 people lost their lives and communities were destroyed. The bulldozers were flattening large portions of the town. A week later it would be difficult to see where the houses were on the morning of December 26th.
There was a pitiful little pile of battered chairs, broken tables, dented pots and a few bits of clothing where the bulldozers were working the salvaged remains of hundreds of households of what was once a thriving community.
The Sri Lanka government was quick to respond in the immediate aftermath of the disaster in getting bulldozers out to clear the main roads, putting in temporary bridges where the tsunami had taken them out.
Most of the main roads were opened a few days after the disaster or diversions were in place in areas which were impassable for months. Aid and assistance was getting through.
People looked to the sea for their livelihood and their entertainment.
The sea was their friend. The sea dealt them a savage blow. The glorious beaches now stay eerily empty, the fishing boats 'parked' in places never meant for boats. Four years later. survivors have tried and have begun to rebuild their lives.
Where did they start?
Observing two-minute silence today
The government has urged the people to observe a two minute silence today, by remembering all those who perished in natural disasters in Sri Lanka over the years, especially those who perished in the 2004 tsunami.
The government has urged the entire nation to observe the silence from 9.25 to 9.27 a.m.
Special police teams have been deployed to stop traffic within the specified period and those travelling would also be requested to observe the silence.
“We want the whole nation to come together within these two minutes and remember all our brothers and sisters who died in the 2004 tragedy and all other tragedies in the country,” the police said.
Acting Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Rohana Dissanayake also made a special appeal at an event held at the Disaster Management Centre earlier this week for the nation to oblige and mark the two-minute silence.
The Minister also said the National Safety Day which is commemorated today would be held in Kandy this year.
Minister Dissanayake added that if the country was to face another natural disaster like the tsunami, arrangements were in place to respond to the crisis situation swiftly and effectively.
He observed that new communications and response systems had been implemented to cope with the disaster.
The National Safety Day comes as a result of a cabinet proposal made in May 2006, and the first event marking the day was held on December 26, 2006 in Galle.
The 2007 event followed in Ratnapura. This year's event is being held at Dharmaraja College in Kandy.
Schoolgirl's geography lesson saves family
On December 26, 2004, British schoolgirl Tilly Smith, ten-year-old, sensed something was wrong while on the beach with her family. Her mind kept going back to the geography lesson Mr. Kearney gave just two weeks before she flew out to a Thai resort with her family.
“The water was swelling and kept coming in,” recalled Penny Smith, Tilly's mother. “There was froth on it like you get on the top of a beer. The sea was like a millpond before [the swelling began].”
The Smiths, from southeast England, were celebrating Christmas at Mai Khao Beach in Phuket, southern Thailand. Deadly tsunami waves were already on their way — triggered by a massive earthquake off northern Sumatra earlier that morning.
"The beach was getting smaller and smaller," said Penny Smith, 43. "I felt compelled to look, but I didn't know what was happening. Then Tilly said she'd just studied this at school — she talked about tectonic plates and an earthquake under the sea. She got more and more hysterical. In the end she was screaming at us to get off the beach."
Tilly's father, Colin Smith, 46, said other tourists on the beach were alerted by his daughter's concerns as he took Tilly and her seven-year-old sister back to the hotel swimming pool.
Penny Smith added, "I didn't know what a tsunami was, but seeing your daughter so frightened made you think something serious must be going on."
She remembers seeing a yacht being tipped vertically in the bay. "Then it was as if the entire sea came out of the water. I was screaming, 'Run!'"
The family took refuge on the third floor of their hotel. Set well back from the shore, it withstood the surge of three tsunami waves.
"Everything went in the swimming pool — beds, palm trees, the lot," Penny Smith said. "Even if you hadn't drowned, you would have been hit by something."
If they had stayed on the beach, she believes they wouldn't have made it to safety.
In the disaster's aftermath, the Smiths said, they met people from nearby resorts who had lost whole families.
Tilly Smith left back safely for her at Danes Hill School in Oxshott, Surrey, England soon after the tsunami.
A week later, she told her geography class how the sea slowly rose and started to foam, bubble, and form whirlpools before the big waves came.
"What Tilly described as happening was exactly the same as I'd shown on a video of a tsunami that hit the Hawaiian islands [in 1946]," said Andrew F. Kearney, Tilly's geography teacher.
"She saw the consequences of not acting when something strange happens."
Kearney had many hundreds of supportive e-mails from teachers around the world since Tilly's story was first reported in Britain.
"People often underrate teaching and teachers and they feel it's important to show we can make a difference," Kearney said. (National Geographic News)
Did animals sense tsunami disaster?
Before giant waves slammed into Sri Lankan and Indian coastlines on December 26, 2004, wild and domestic animals seemed to know what was about to happen and had fled to safety.
According to eyewitnesses, the following events took place:
Elephants screamed and ran for higher ground. Dogs refused to go outdoors. Flamingos abandoned their low-lying breeding areas and zoo animals rushed into their shelters and could not be enticed to come back out.
The belief that wild and domestic animals possess a sixth sense — and know in advance when the earth was going to shake — has been around for centuries.
Wild Life experts believe animals' more acute hearing and other senses might enable them to hear or feel the earth's vibration, tipping them off to approaching disaster long before humans realise what's going on.
The massive tsunami was triggered by a sea quake of 9 on the Richter scale off the coast of Northern Sumatra island on December 26. The giant waves rolled through the Indian Ocean, killing more than 150,000 people in a dozen countries.
Relatively few animals have been reported dead, however, reviving speculation that animals somehow sense impending disaster.
Ravi Corea, President of the Sri Lanka Wild Life Conservation Society, which is based in Nutley, New Jersey, was in Sri Lanka when the massive waves struck.
He travelled later to the Patanangala beach inside Yala National Park, where some 60 visitors were washed away.
The beach was one of the worst hit areas of the 500-square-mile (1,300-square-kilometre) wild life reserve, which is home to a variety of animals, including elephants, leopards, and 130 species of birds.
Mr. Corea did not see any animal carcasses nor did the park personnel know of any, other than two water buffaloes that had died, he said.
Along India's Cuddalore coast, where thousands of people perished, the Indo-Asian News service reported that buffaloes, goats, and dogs were found unharmed.
Flamingos that breed this time of year at the Point Calimere wild life sanctuary in India flew to higher ground beforehand, the news service reported.
Accounts of strange animal behaviour have also started to surface.
About an hour before the tsunami hit, Corea said, people at Yala National Park observed three elephants running away from the Patanangala beach.
World Wild Life Fund, an organiswation that leads international efforts to protect endangered species and their habitats, has satellite collars on some of the elephants in the park.
A spokeswoman said they plan to track the elephants on that fateful day to verify whether they did move to higher ground. She doesn't know, though, when the satellite data would be downloaded and analysed.
Mr. Corea, a Sri Lankan who migrated to United States 20 years ago, said two of his friends noticed unusual animal behaviour before the tsunami.
One friend, in the southern Sri Lankan town of Dikwella, recalls bats frantically flying away just before the tsunami struck. Another friend, who lived on the coast near Galle, said his two dogs would not go for their daily run on the beach.
"They are usually excited to go on this outing," Corea said. But on this day they refused to go and most probably saved his life.
Alan Rabinowitz, director for science and exploration at the Bronx Zoo-based Wild Life Conservation Society in New York, says animals could sense impending dangers by detecting subtle or abrupt shifts in the environment.
"Earth-quakes bring vibrational changes on land and in water while storms cause electro-magnetic changes in the atmosphere," he said. "Some animals have acute sense of hearing and smell that allow them to determine something coming towards them long before humans might know that something is there."
(National Geographic News)
dailymirror.lk
Saturday, December 20, 2008
HOW I SURVIVED A PLANE CRASH.....!!!
How I Survived a Plane Crash...............By Dr. Lakshman Abeyagunawardene
December 17th marked the 30th anniversary of the day I had a brush with death being involved in a plane crash in which the Boeing B-737 was reduced to ashes, but where the majority of passengers miraculously survived. Needless to say, I too lived to tell the tale!
A strange coincidence it may be, but it was exactly 75 years before on that very same date that Orville Wright made the first successful, piloted flight in history in a powered airplane on December 17th, 1903 near a beach in North Carolina, not far from where I now live. Orville was the younger of the famous Wright brothers who have been credited with the invention of the airplane. Wright’s flight reached an altitude of just 20 feet, covered 120 feet and lasted only12 seconds. The flight that I am about to describe attained a higher altitude, covered a longer distance and lasted much longer!
New Delhi Bound
There were no direct flights to New Delhi from Colombo in the seventies. Passengers from Colombo had to take a flight to Madras (Chennai) and then proceed to New Delhi often via another major Indian city such as Hyderabad. I was one of many Lankans who boarded a plane at Katunayake that left for Madras on December 16th, 1978. Four of them including myself were Health Ministry officials who were on their way to New Delhi to attend meetings at the South East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) of the World Health Organization (WHO). Ministry Secretary B.C. Perera, Medical Statistician Srini Samaranayake, and Principal of the Anuradhapura Nurses Training School Padma Siriwardene were my Health Ministry colleagues who were also my fellow passengers on that flight.
It was a pleasant flight that took us to Madras where we stayed overnight to take another flight to Hyderabad early morning the following day en route to New Delhi.
The flight from Madras in the Indian Airlines plane left the airport and headed for Hyderabad. Although we knew that the plane had reached Hyderabad, it never landed there. After circling over the airport for some time, the pilot had decided to go back to Madras, due to poor visibility around the Begumpet airport in Hyderabad that misty morning. We were disappointed, but not unduly concerned. In hindsight, it was a bad omen if one is prone to be superstitious. Whether the pilot was being overly careful and not taking undue risks had anything to do with the precious cargo he was carrying, we will never know. On board that flight was the South Indian film idol M.G. Ramachandran who by that time was a leading political figure in Tamil Nadu. Apparently, he too was heading for New Delhi to attend an important meeting.
Having gone back to Chidamparam airport in Madras, we patiently waited until it was time to restart the journey. It was about two hours later that we were airborne again and on the way to Hyderabad. The skies had cleared considerably by that time, and the plane landed safely on the runway at Begumpet airport. We were scheduled to leave again from there after a stopover of forty minutes. However, VIP M.G. Ramachandran was not on the plane that took off from Madras a second time. He had probably changed his mind and cancelled the trip to New Delhi due to the delay. Going by the events that unfolded in Hyderabad that fateful day, MGR had taken one of the wisest decisions in his life.
High Company
On the second leg of our journey to New Delhi too, we were in high company. Another prominent Indian politician of that era M. Channa Reddy who was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, then Chief Secretary I.J. Naidu, and the Inspector General of Police of the state M.V. Narayana Rao were among the 126 passengers on board. Dr. Reddy had also served as a State Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister, and Governor in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Everything looked fine as the plane started along the runway for take off. But as it gathered speed and momentum, the whole plane started shuddering and rattling. By then, it was probably too late for the pilot to abort the flight and bring the plane to a halt on the runway itself. The plane did take off but only succeeded in gaining some altitude before coming down in a rapid descent. As the plane lost altitude, we clung on to our seats not knowing what the next moment would bring. There was a loud impact that shook the plane as it touched terra firma again after the shortest flight that I had ever taken! If the passengers were not thrown around, it was only because they were wearing their seat belts.
Not stopping immediately, the plane careered along tilting from side to side until it was brought to a halt. The cabin lights went off and passengers noticed that one engine was on fire. Thick black smoke filled the cabin and passengers were feeling terribly uncomfortable. We had seen the usual routine of a flight stewardess going through the motions in demonstrating the use of oxygen masks just a few minutes before during preparations for take off. But ironically, they never dropped down, as one would have expected when smoke started filling the cabin. By now all passengers knew that the fire was raging – an inferno in which we were trapped. Some people were screaming, but there was no pandemonium as such. A few sensible quick-thinking passengers climbed on to the seats to try and calm down others who seemed to be in a more agitated state. In the meantime, cabin crew tried to open the exit doors. They had trouble initially, but after a few agonising moments, they finally managed to get one opened somewhere in the centre of the fuselage. The exit door at the rear too was opened a few minutes later. Passengers started moving towards them in some order. Instead of stampeding wildly in all directions, the relatively disciplined manner in which the passengers acted would certainly have prevented more deaths in this disaster.
(Websites that cover air disasters provide more technical descriptions of the accident in narrative form together with pictures of the destroyed plane. Websites of interest to readers include:
http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/15/stories/2008031558870200.htm http://www.b737.org.uk/accident_reports.htm http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jul/17air8.htm)
Survival of the Fittest
I unbuckled my seat belt and took my turn in a line that formed spontaneously in the central aisle. I did not even try to pick up my brief case that was lying underneath the front seat because every second mattered. By that time, the entire plane was on fire and I could even feel the heat through the floorboards and soles of my shoes. I was one of the first to reach the exit. But to my dismay, I soon discovered that there was no chute for anyone to slide down. I jumped out without any hesitation, but just like the way the plane came down, mine too was not a smooth landing! I went sprawling on the ground the same way a few other passengers did. Fortunately, the height from which we had to jump was not much. The landing gear (according to later reports) had been retracted for a belly-landing. I did not realise it at that time, but I had badly twisted my ankle in jumping out of the plane even from that height. I remember creeping through a partly damaged barbed wire fence and running for dear life. But as I ran, I was tempted to look back. The entire plane was engulfed in flames. It was only then that I had time to think of my fellow Sri Lankan passengers. I feared the worst - that all of them would have got trapped inside and perished. It was a case of "survival of the fittest". If there were any sick passengers, invalids or anyone who was old and feeble, they simply would not have had a chance. It was later reported that the only passenger who died had two little children with him. He had to virtually throw them out before jumping through the flames himself. He had died in hospital having suffered severe burns.
Lost in the Crowd
Soon after I "evacuated" the plane, what I saw on the ground was equally horrible. I first saw a stewardess rolling on the ground trying to douse the flames on her Indian silk sari that had caught fire. Just beyond the barbed wire fence were two mangled dead bodies.
Two poor grass cutters who were working in the field had been crushed by the plane. A swarm of people from the village appeared from nowhere. No one offered help but simply gaped at me. Just as I got lost in the crowd, I heard the wailing sirens of ambulances and fire engines. But they were not heading in my direction. I did what I thought was the only sensible thing to do. I got into a trishaw (three wheeler) and used sign language to get the driver to take me to the passenger terminal. It is interesting to recall that soon after boarding the aircraft, I had settled down in my aisle seat without removing the dark blue blazer that I was wearing that day. In my coat pocket were the air ticket, international health card, passport, travelers’cheques and some cash in Indian currency. This action of mine saved me a lot of trouble that I would otherwise have been faced with during the rest of the journey had I lost those precious items. I was thus able to reach for my wallet confidently and pay the trishaw driver his fare. At a time when getting international telephone calls from a place like Hyderabad was almost impossible, I rushed to the Post Office in the passenger terminal and dispatched a telegram to my wife. It carried a brief message – "Plane crash landed. Escaped unhurt". If she heard the news on the radio, it would have caused her more anxiety.
It was in the terminal building that I was relieved to be reunited with my fellow Sri Lankan passengers who too had obviously made the miraculous escape. It was only then that I fully realized the plight I was in – stranded in the airport terminal in a strange land with only the clothes that I was wearing.
Flight to New Delhi
The Indian Airlines authorities had hurriedly arranged a special flight for us to be taken to New Delhi from Hyderabad. It was with much trepidation that I boarded yet another Indian Airlines plane! But we were anxious to get to our next destination as soon as possible. As the plane accelerated along the runway, we kept our fingers crossed. But as it settled down after that initial steep climb, the passengers broke into spontaneous applause! After a safe landing in New Delhi on that cold December night, it was close to midnight when we entered the lobby in Lodhi Hotel (where we had prior reservations). I had neither a toothbrush to brush my teeth nor a comfortable sarong to get into before going to bed at the end of a hectic day. I wrapped a bath towel around my waist and crept under the blankets almost in a daze. It was only then that I became conscious of the throbbing pain in my badly swollen right ankle. However, we all went to the WHO Regional Office the next morning. Most of us even managed to go through the weeklong meeting, but not before going shopping for new clothes at Connaught Place with the cash advance we were provided. But Mr. B.C. Perera who had suffered minor burns on his face decided to return home immediately.
My Only Memento
I have lost count of the number of flights that I have taken in my lifetime. I have not bothered to collect scraps of paper in the form of boarding passes from all those flights that I would have taken both before and after the disaster. But I do have with me the boarding pass issued to me at the check-in counter of Indian Airlines at the Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad on December 17th, 1978. The boarding pass that I have preserved to this day remains the only memento from that unforgettable flight.
E-Mail: luckyabey@gmail.com
www island.lk
December 17th marked the 30th anniversary of the day I had a brush with death being involved in a plane crash in which the Boeing B-737 was reduced to ashes, but where the majority of passengers miraculously survived. Needless to say, I too lived to tell the tale!
A strange coincidence it may be, but it was exactly 75 years before on that very same date that Orville Wright made the first successful, piloted flight in history in a powered airplane on December 17th, 1903 near a beach in North Carolina, not far from where I now live. Orville was the younger of the famous Wright brothers who have been credited with the invention of the airplane. Wright’s flight reached an altitude of just 20 feet, covered 120 feet and lasted only12 seconds. The flight that I am about to describe attained a higher altitude, covered a longer distance and lasted much longer!
New Delhi Bound
There were no direct flights to New Delhi from Colombo in the seventies. Passengers from Colombo had to take a flight to Madras (Chennai) and then proceed to New Delhi often via another major Indian city such as Hyderabad. I was one of many Lankans who boarded a plane at Katunayake that left for Madras on December 16th, 1978. Four of them including myself were Health Ministry officials who were on their way to New Delhi to attend meetings at the South East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) of the World Health Organization (WHO). Ministry Secretary B.C. Perera, Medical Statistician Srini Samaranayake, and Principal of the Anuradhapura Nurses Training School Padma Siriwardene were my Health Ministry colleagues who were also my fellow passengers on that flight.
It was a pleasant flight that took us to Madras where we stayed overnight to take another flight to Hyderabad early morning the following day en route to New Delhi.
The flight from Madras in the Indian Airlines plane left the airport and headed for Hyderabad. Although we knew that the plane had reached Hyderabad, it never landed there. After circling over the airport for some time, the pilot had decided to go back to Madras, due to poor visibility around the Begumpet airport in Hyderabad that misty morning. We were disappointed, but not unduly concerned. In hindsight, it was a bad omen if one is prone to be superstitious. Whether the pilot was being overly careful and not taking undue risks had anything to do with the precious cargo he was carrying, we will never know. On board that flight was the South Indian film idol M.G. Ramachandran who by that time was a leading political figure in Tamil Nadu. Apparently, he too was heading for New Delhi to attend an important meeting.
Having gone back to Chidamparam airport in Madras, we patiently waited until it was time to restart the journey. It was about two hours later that we were airborne again and on the way to Hyderabad. The skies had cleared considerably by that time, and the plane landed safely on the runway at Begumpet airport. We were scheduled to leave again from there after a stopover of forty minutes. However, VIP M.G. Ramachandran was not on the plane that took off from Madras a second time. He had probably changed his mind and cancelled the trip to New Delhi due to the delay. Going by the events that unfolded in Hyderabad that fateful day, MGR had taken one of the wisest decisions in his life.
High Company
On the second leg of our journey to New Delhi too, we were in high company. Another prominent Indian politician of that era M. Channa Reddy who was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, then Chief Secretary I.J. Naidu, and the Inspector General of Police of the state M.V. Narayana Rao were among the 126 passengers on board. Dr. Reddy had also served as a State Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister, and Governor in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Everything looked fine as the plane started along the runway for take off. But as it gathered speed and momentum, the whole plane started shuddering and rattling. By then, it was probably too late for the pilot to abort the flight and bring the plane to a halt on the runway itself. The plane did take off but only succeeded in gaining some altitude before coming down in a rapid descent. As the plane lost altitude, we clung on to our seats not knowing what the next moment would bring. There was a loud impact that shook the plane as it touched terra firma again after the shortest flight that I had ever taken! If the passengers were not thrown around, it was only because they were wearing their seat belts.
Not stopping immediately, the plane careered along tilting from side to side until it was brought to a halt. The cabin lights went off and passengers noticed that one engine was on fire. Thick black smoke filled the cabin and passengers were feeling terribly uncomfortable. We had seen the usual routine of a flight stewardess going through the motions in demonstrating the use of oxygen masks just a few minutes before during preparations for take off. But ironically, they never dropped down, as one would have expected when smoke started filling the cabin. By now all passengers knew that the fire was raging – an inferno in which we were trapped. Some people were screaming, but there was no pandemonium as such. A few sensible quick-thinking passengers climbed on to the seats to try and calm down others who seemed to be in a more agitated state. In the meantime, cabin crew tried to open the exit doors. They had trouble initially, but after a few agonising moments, they finally managed to get one opened somewhere in the centre of the fuselage. The exit door at the rear too was opened a few minutes later. Passengers started moving towards them in some order. Instead of stampeding wildly in all directions, the relatively disciplined manner in which the passengers acted would certainly have prevented more deaths in this disaster.
(Websites that cover air disasters provide more technical descriptions of the accident in narrative form together with pictures of the destroyed plane. Websites of interest to readers include:
http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/15/stories/2008031558870200.htm http://www.b737.org.uk/accident_reports.htm http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jul/17air8.htm)
Survival of the Fittest
I unbuckled my seat belt and took my turn in a line that formed spontaneously in the central aisle. I did not even try to pick up my brief case that was lying underneath the front seat because every second mattered. By that time, the entire plane was on fire and I could even feel the heat through the floorboards and soles of my shoes. I was one of the first to reach the exit. But to my dismay, I soon discovered that there was no chute for anyone to slide down. I jumped out without any hesitation, but just like the way the plane came down, mine too was not a smooth landing! I went sprawling on the ground the same way a few other passengers did. Fortunately, the height from which we had to jump was not much. The landing gear (according to later reports) had been retracted for a belly-landing. I did not realise it at that time, but I had badly twisted my ankle in jumping out of the plane even from that height. I remember creeping through a partly damaged barbed wire fence and running for dear life. But as I ran, I was tempted to look back. The entire plane was engulfed in flames. It was only then that I had time to think of my fellow Sri Lankan passengers. I feared the worst - that all of them would have got trapped inside and perished. It was a case of "survival of the fittest". If there were any sick passengers, invalids or anyone who was old and feeble, they simply would not have had a chance. It was later reported that the only passenger who died had two little children with him. He had to virtually throw them out before jumping through the flames himself. He had died in hospital having suffered severe burns.
Lost in the Crowd
Soon after I "evacuated" the plane, what I saw on the ground was equally horrible. I first saw a stewardess rolling on the ground trying to douse the flames on her Indian silk sari that had caught fire. Just beyond the barbed wire fence were two mangled dead bodies.
Two poor grass cutters who were working in the field had been crushed by the plane. A swarm of people from the village appeared from nowhere. No one offered help but simply gaped at me. Just as I got lost in the crowd, I heard the wailing sirens of ambulances and fire engines. But they were not heading in my direction. I did what I thought was the only sensible thing to do. I got into a trishaw (three wheeler) and used sign language to get the driver to take me to the passenger terminal. It is interesting to recall that soon after boarding the aircraft, I had settled down in my aisle seat without removing the dark blue blazer that I was wearing that day. In my coat pocket were the air ticket, international health card, passport, travelers’cheques and some cash in Indian currency. This action of mine saved me a lot of trouble that I would otherwise have been faced with during the rest of the journey had I lost those precious items. I was thus able to reach for my wallet confidently and pay the trishaw driver his fare. At a time when getting international telephone calls from a place like Hyderabad was almost impossible, I rushed to the Post Office in the passenger terminal and dispatched a telegram to my wife. It carried a brief message – "Plane crash landed. Escaped unhurt". If she heard the news on the radio, it would have caused her more anxiety.
It was in the terminal building that I was relieved to be reunited with my fellow Sri Lankan passengers who too had obviously made the miraculous escape. It was only then that I fully realized the plight I was in – stranded in the airport terminal in a strange land with only the clothes that I was wearing.
Flight to New Delhi
The Indian Airlines authorities had hurriedly arranged a special flight for us to be taken to New Delhi from Hyderabad. It was with much trepidation that I boarded yet another Indian Airlines plane! But we were anxious to get to our next destination as soon as possible. As the plane accelerated along the runway, we kept our fingers crossed. But as it settled down after that initial steep climb, the passengers broke into spontaneous applause! After a safe landing in New Delhi on that cold December night, it was close to midnight when we entered the lobby in Lodhi Hotel (where we had prior reservations). I had neither a toothbrush to brush my teeth nor a comfortable sarong to get into before going to bed at the end of a hectic day. I wrapped a bath towel around my waist and crept under the blankets almost in a daze. It was only then that I became conscious of the throbbing pain in my badly swollen right ankle. However, we all went to the WHO Regional Office the next morning. Most of us even managed to go through the weeklong meeting, but not before going shopping for new clothes at Connaught Place with the cash advance we were provided. But Mr. B.C. Perera who had suffered minor burns on his face decided to return home immediately.
My Only Memento
I have lost count of the number of flights that I have taken in my lifetime. I have not bothered to collect scraps of paper in the form of boarding passes from all those flights that I would have taken both before and after the disaster. But I do have with me the boarding pass issued to me at the check-in counter of Indian Airlines at the Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad on December 17th, 1978. The boarding pass that I have preserved to this day remains the only memento from that unforgettable flight.
E-Mail: luckyabey@gmail.com
www island.lk
Sunday, December 14, 2008
DIABETES-2 AND TUBERCULOSIS BY LUNG INFECTIONS.........!!!
Addressing diabetes is vital for strengthening tuberculosis control..by Amit Dwivedi
Patients with type-2 diabetes may be at increased risk of contracting tuberculosis (TB) because they generally have a compromised immune system, which results in life-threatening lung infections that are more difficult to treat
Research at the University of Texas School of Public Health Brownsville shows that type 2 diabetes, especially when it involves chronic high blood sugar, is associated with altered immune response to TB. Patients with diabetes and TB take longer to respond to anti-TB treatment, and that patients with active tuberculosis and type-2 diabetes are more likely to have multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). Almost six percent of people with diabetes had MDR-TB, reported this study. 30 per cent of those with MDR-TB also had type 2 diabetes.
According to World Diabetes Foundation (WDF), it was estimated that in 2007 there were 246 million people living with diabetes, 6 million new cases were diagnosed and 3.5 million people died due to diabetes.
According to the Global TB Control report, published by World Health Organization (WHO) for the same year, there were 14.4 million people living with TB, 9.2 million new cases and 1.7 million died due to this disease. While it is recognized that 95% per cent of TB patients live in developing world, it is not so well known that 70 per cent of people with diabetes also live in developing countries, especially in Southeast Asia and the pacific region.
India has a strong TB control programme in the world, referred to as the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) or Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS). However, we need to focus more for its effective implementation. Public- private partnership can alleviate the problem of TB in people living with diabetes, said Dr Anthony D Harries, senior advisor, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD, The Union).
Dr Harries was of the opinion that, "there are many risk factors for TB, which include HIV/AIDS, silicosis, malnutrition and smoking. While the link between TB and diabetes has been known since roman times, it is only recently that unequivocal evidence has been gathered to show a strong association between the two diseases. With an estimated 21 million adults with diabetes and 900000 incident pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) cases in 2000, diabetes accounted for nearly 15% of pulmonary TB and 20% of smear- positive pulmonary TB. Diabetes therefore appears to increase the risk of active TB."
Dr Harries advocated that "there are three pronged approach for the DOTS strategy for TB control: 1) identify TB patients through passive case finding, 2) diagnose TB through sputum smear examination and 3) put the patients on anti-TB treatment."
Dr. Harries further said "In most of the developing countries there are no systematic ways of monitoring or evaluating patients with non-communicable diseases (NCD). This has to change. The DOTS framework for TB control, developed by the IUATLD and WHO, has allowed structured, well-monitored services to be delivered to millions of TB patients in some of the poorest countries of the world. In a resource poor-country like Malawi, the DOTS model was successfully adapted for scaling up and monitoring antiretroviral therapy (ART) to people living with HIV (PLHIV). This model can be adapted for NCDs, such as diabetes, as well. With treatment cards and registers, it would be feasible to make comprehensive quarterly reports on diabetes treatment outcomes, which would include the monitoring and evaluation of co-morbidities such as TB."
The Millennium Development Goal number 6, specifies that the incidence of infectious diseases such as TB should be halted and reversed by 2015. To succeed in achieving this target, it is important to focus on resource-poor countries not only on for HIV/AIDS but also on the burgeoning epidemic of diabetes as a significant epidemiological risk factor.
(The author is a Special Correspondent to Citizen News Service (CNS). Email: amit@citizen-news.org, website: www.citizen-news.org)
www island.lk
Patients with type-2 diabetes may be at increased risk of contracting tuberculosis (TB) because they generally have a compromised immune system, which results in life-threatening lung infections that are more difficult to treat
Research at the University of Texas School of Public Health Brownsville shows that type 2 diabetes, especially when it involves chronic high blood sugar, is associated with altered immune response to TB. Patients with diabetes and TB take longer to respond to anti-TB treatment, and that patients with active tuberculosis and type-2 diabetes are more likely to have multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). Almost six percent of people with diabetes had MDR-TB, reported this study. 30 per cent of those with MDR-TB also had type 2 diabetes.
According to World Diabetes Foundation (WDF), it was estimated that in 2007 there were 246 million people living with diabetes, 6 million new cases were diagnosed and 3.5 million people died due to diabetes.
According to the Global TB Control report, published by World Health Organization (WHO) for the same year, there were 14.4 million people living with TB, 9.2 million new cases and 1.7 million died due to this disease. While it is recognized that 95% per cent of TB patients live in developing world, it is not so well known that 70 per cent of people with diabetes also live in developing countries, especially in Southeast Asia and the pacific region.
India has a strong TB control programme in the world, referred to as the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) or Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS). However, we need to focus more for its effective implementation. Public- private partnership can alleviate the problem of TB in people living with diabetes, said Dr Anthony D Harries, senior advisor, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD, The Union).
Dr Harries was of the opinion that, "there are many risk factors for TB, which include HIV/AIDS, silicosis, malnutrition and smoking. While the link between TB and diabetes has been known since roman times, it is only recently that unequivocal evidence has been gathered to show a strong association between the two diseases. With an estimated 21 million adults with diabetes and 900000 incident pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) cases in 2000, diabetes accounted for nearly 15% of pulmonary TB and 20% of smear- positive pulmonary TB. Diabetes therefore appears to increase the risk of active TB."
Dr Harries advocated that "there are three pronged approach for the DOTS strategy for TB control: 1) identify TB patients through passive case finding, 2) diagnose TB through sputum smear examination and 3) put the patients on anti-TB treatment."
Dr. Harries further said "In most of the developing countries there are no systematic ways of monitoring or evaluating patients with non-communicable diseases (NCD). This has to change. The DOTS framework for TB control, developed by the IUATLD and WHO, has allowed structured, well-monitored services to be delivered to millions of TB patients in some of the poorest countries of the world. In a resource poor-country like Malawi, the DOTS model was successfully adapted for scaling up and monitoring antiretroviral therapy (ART) to people living with HIV (PLHIV). This model can be adapted for NCDs, such as diabetes, as well. With treatment cards and registers, it would be feasible to make comprehensive quarterly reports on diabetes treatment outcomes, which would include the monitoring and evaluation of co-morbidities such as TB."
The Millennium Development Goal number 6, specifies that the incidence of infectious diseases such as TB should be halted and reversed by 2015. To succeed in achieving this target, it is important to focus on resource-poor countries not only on for HIV/AIDS but also on the burgeoning epidemic of diabetes as a significant epidemiological risk factor.
(The author is a Special Correspondent to Citizen News Service (CNS). Email: amit@citizen-news.org, website: www.citizen-news.org)
www island.lk
Thursday, December 11, 2008
800000 CHILDREN KILLED EVERY YEAR !!!
Drowning, other accidents kill 800,000 kids a year
Ben Stocking
Simple things like seat belts, childproof medicine caps and fences around pools could help prevent up to half of the 2,000 accidental deaths of children that happen each day around the world, UN officials said Wednesday.
A child rides motorcycle without a helmet in Hanoi, Vietnam. AP
More than 800,000 children die each year from burns, drowning, car accidents, falls, poisoning and other accidents, with the vast majority of those deaths occurring in developing countries, according to experts and a report released Wednesday by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
Tens of millions more suffer injuries that often leave them disabled for life, said the report which was launched at a meeting of global health experts in Hanoi. The World Report on Child Injury Prevention 2008 does not include injuries caused by domestic violence.
The problem is most acute in Africa and Southeast Asia, but no country is immune, conference participants said, issuing an urgent call for action.
"The price of failure is high," said Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, speaking in a videotape shown at the conference. "On current estimates, unintentional injuries claim the lives of around 830,000 children worldwide every year." The report calls on countries around the world to issue prevention measures such as seatbelt and helmet laws, child-safe medicine bottles, water heater controls and safer designs for nursery furniture and toys. It also recommends various traffic safety improvements and putting fences around pools and ponds to prevent drowning. A child-friendly version with safety tips was issued at the conference and online.
Such steps have been taken in many high-income countries and have reduced child injury deaths by up to 50 percent over the last 30 years, the report says.
Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF's executive director, said unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for children between 9 and 18 years old and 95 percent of these injuries occur in developing countries.
"More must be done to prevent such harm to children," she said, also speaking via video.
AP
Ben Stocking
Simple things like seat belts, childproof medicine caps and fences around pools could help prevent up to half of the 2,000 accidental deaths of children that happen each day around the world, UN officials said Wednesday.
A child rides motorcycle without a helmet in Hanoi, Vietnam. AP
More than 800,000 children die each year from burns, drowning, car accidents, falls, poisoning and other accidents, with the vast majority of those deaths occurring in developing countries, according to experts and a report released Wednesday by the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
Tens of millions more suffer injuries that often leave them disabled for life, said the report which was launched at a meeting of global health experts in Hanoi. The World Report on Child Injury Prevention 2008 does not include injuries caused by domestic violence.
The problem is most acute in Africa and Southeast Asia, but no country is immune, conference participants said, issuing an urgent call for action.
"The price of failure is high," said Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, speaking in a videotape shown at the conference. "On current estimates, unintentional injuries claim the lives of around 830,000 children worldwide every year." The report calls on countries around the world to issue prevention measures such as seatbelt and helmet laws, child-safe medicine bottles, water heater controls and safer designs for nursery furniture and toys. It also recommends various traffic safety improvements and putting fences around pools and ponds to prevent drowning. A child-friendly version with safety tips was issued at the conference and online.
Such steps have been taken in many high-income countries and have reduced child injury deaths by up to 50 percent over the last 30 years, the report says.
Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF's executive director, said unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for children between 9 and 18 years old and 95 percent of these injuries occur in developing countries.
"More must be done to prevent such harm to children," she said, also speaking via video.
AP
INTL TEA DAY: PLANTATION SECTOR SOCIAL FORUM!!
Women in plantation sector and ‘Tea Day’
International days (I.Ds) are celebrated throughout the year. The purpose of celebrating International days is to promote the life of people, remind people of the human values which are forgotten due to industrialisation and materialistic values, to enable people to think of their fellowmen who are effected in some way or other, and thereby make every person, every community and the every Government to be concerned and be accountable partners of development and well-being of the whole human society.
On December 15 the International Tea Day (I.T.D) is celebrated in Sri Lanka, India and all tea producing countries. There are millions and millions of people working in tea plantations in Sri Lanka, Asia and in many tea producing countries.
Except in few countries, in most of the tea producing countries the tea industry workers had lived like slaves. They were highly exploited in the economic, social and in other areas of life including employment.
The women in the industry lived a sub standed life compared to women in other sectors. No one can deny that although the plantation sector still remains the backbone of economy of the country. The people living within the sector remain a marginalized people and subjected to various kinds of discriminations. In this backdrop international Tea Day was declared on December 15, 2005 at the tea conference held in India, New Delhi. The objective of this day was to bring the problems and issues of the tea plantation workers at national and international level, to ensure a fair trade practices in the industry, to built solidarity among tea workers all over the world and also to stress for the importance of safeguarding the industry in the interest of all stakeholders including all tea producers specially the tea smallholders.
The celebration of the I.T.D during the last few years has built a sense of brotherhood and solidarity among all tea workers in the world and making them feel that they are not isolated within their countries. I.T.D was declared by stakeholders who are interested in the future of the industry and the welfare of the people working in it, but has still not gained recognition of the United Nations (UN).
The day needs to be celebrated continuously nationally and internationally and the relevant themes popularised in order to gain UN recognition. And when the I.T.D is recognised by the UN the tea producing countries including Sri Lanka would be required to pay more attention in sustaining the industry and showing more concern for, women and children who depend on the industry.
This year makes the fourth anniversary of the I.T.D. Plantation Sector Social Forum had ensured the celebration of the day continuously during the last four years. The general theme of the I.T.D is “Let us ensure a living wage for the plantation workers”. In the year 2006 too the same theme was highlighted and the Tea Day on December 15, 2006 coincided with the island wide work stoppage by the plantation workers demanding wage increase through the collective agreement.
The I.T.D celebrated in 2006 December at Hatton in this background drew more than 10,000 plantation workers which made the I.T.D popular and known among the plantation people. The third I.T.D was celebrated at Bandarawela. This year being the fourth anniversary the I.T.D is to be celebrated at Nawalapitiya. Although the main theme of the I.T.D is to ensure a living wage to the plantation workers, in order to popularize the various clauses in the New Delhi declarations sub themes are introduced every year. The theme for this tea day is “Let us promote women’s leadership in the plantation sector”.
At this stage it is appropriate to look into some of the clauses of the New Delhi declaration of the Tea Day with regard to women in the sector.
In short the Delhi declaration stressed that the women’s views needs to be recognised and respected and given due consideration. Violence against women should be ended. Women’s reproductive right and other rights need to be safeguarded. With the view to popularize these ideas the theme for this year is defined as “Let us promote women’s leadership in the plantation sector”.
In order to reduce violence against plantation women a clause stressing the appointment of women over women workers had been introduced into the collective agreement entered into few years ago between the trade unions and employer’s federations. Provision of common aminities in the working fields, facilities for women to receive their own wages, improved environment for women where they would be protected from sexual harassment and discriminations are matters that had been agreed upon among the parties. But most of these agreements remain a dead letter and constituent parties are conveniently avoiding to speak about them. “Tea Day” with its theme to promote women leadership will try to bring pressure on the relevant parties to implement these agreements.
Further, in Sri Lanka there are policies and mechanism in place for the development of women, safeguarding their rights and ensure their security. None of these services or its benefits reach the plantation women. Activating an advocacy program to ensure the Government’s women welfare services reaching the plantation sector is the other objective of celebrating Tea Day. In the meantime I.T.D is celebrated in India and other tea producing countries and processes are under way nationally and internationally to gain recognition for the Tea Day from the UN.
S. K. Chantrasekaran
dailynews.lk
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