Chandigarh Tribune: Jalandhar: Saturday,
June 11, 2016.
In a
revelation coming via the Right to Information (RTI) Act, it has become known
that the health authorities in the district are not paying any heed to properly
record the incidents of deaths of youths owing to addiction or drug overdose.
Nawanshahr-based
RTI activist Parvinder Singh Kitna had filed an RTI application, seeking
details of the deaths of persons aged between 15 ando 40 in the Mukandpur block
of the district. Senior Medical Officer of the block provided the lists of 427
persons, including men and women of the age group who died from 2011 to 2015.
Of these, a whopping number of 224 persons were shown to have collapsed due to
heart attack. As many as 90 victims of heart attack were of age less than 30,
some of them of aged 16, 17 and 18 only. The heart attack victims included as
many as 44 girls or young women.
Kitna termed
it as a cover-up exercise either on part of the families or the health
officials owing to the social taboo associated with the menace. “I actually
doubt that there can be 224 heart attack deaths of so young people in just one
block of a district in five years. Most of the deaths assigned due to attack or
suicides would also be because of drug addiction. I am saying so as I
personally know about a few of the cases,” said the activist. “Even in case
these are because of heart attack, the health authorities need to probe as to
why the heart ailments are killing so many young people here,” he demanded.
Only five death cases have been attributed to drug addiction. The reasons for
198 other deaths primarily include suicides, accident and cancer. Very few
cases include those of TB, kidney failure, HIV+, asthma, diabetes, fever,
poisoning and even electric shock. Some deaths have also been attributed to
unknown reasons.
Those shown
to have died due to drugs include boys of the age group 21 to 36 from five
different villages of Punjab.
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