Editorial»
Cold wave
JAN 13 - Perennial causes of mortality are always there. In addition to them, death travels in cold waves during the winter.
The number of deaths due to cold wave is increasing everyday in a test cricket score like fashion. The media has kept a close tab on the mortality. It is religiously adding up each death as it happens and reporting it with calm composure of an undertaker. But, I do not hear any news of philanthropy from any person, organisation or the government.
It seems no one is unruffled. Non-governmental organisations seem to be in hibernation to tide over the adverse weather. Government institutions are
always in deep slumber, which is a matter of little wonder. Some
government ministers are themselves getting cold treatment from their own party. Other ministers may be already feeling herald waves of a major change in the fluid political situation. Political parties are busy campaigning for the restoration of stalled democratic process. Because there is democratic vacuum at present, people’s cry is not getting through to the leaders (sound waves can’t travel in vacuum: a law of physics).
Human rights organisations find neither the Maoists’ nor the Royal Nepal Army’s hand in the cold-wave deaths. For that reason, they have kept mum, shrewdly enough. Other civic societies too have found the issue less glamorous politically. They are quite vocal on how Maoist-issue should be solved or why democracy should not die. When people are dying of not having warm clothes, they are as silent as a mute spectator.
On my part, I am useless too. I am just brooding over the issue and drawing analogies. Britain, Canada, France and Scandinavian countries are colder than Nepal by many degrees. There has been no news of cold related
deaths from those countries. If it had happened, it should have been known through the media. It is certainly more important than Princess Anne’s terrier dog killing Queen Elizabeth’s poor poodle. No, they have no such deaths, at least not in significant number.
So, cold-wave mortality may be used as a parameter to measure social progress of a country. To bolster this hypothesis, I would like to remind you here that heat wave had killed more than one thousand people in France last year. In stark contrast to that situation, there have been no cold-related deaths in that country.
It takes more economic energy to fight cold than heat. Heat-retaining items in the form of warm cloths and blankets and heat producing gadgets like heaters require money to buy them. A handful of people are wallowing in money in our country. On the other hand, the poorest of the mass are dying of cold due to inability to buy a few meters of warm cloths.
Contrary to cold, even poor people can fight heat reasonably well. Methods to prevent heat exhaustion and those to promote heat loss are naturally available free of cost. For that reason, deaths due to direct effects of heat do not reflect socioeconomic status of a country. However, death stalks poor people in summer with more menace. It roams in disguise as mosquitoes, houseflies, sand flies, ticks and other bugs. Scores of people
die of diarrhoea, malaria, dysentery, typhoid, kala-azar, Japanese encephalitis, food poisoning, which are completely preventable by good sanitation.
My thought waves are interrupted by a news bulletin: the death toll due to cold wave has reached... . Lord, it has crossed the limits.Posted on: 2004-01-13 02:15
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