Indian Express: Mumbai: Thursday,
September 22, 2016.
One
of the petitioners showed the court a reply received through the Right to
Information (RTI) Act which said over 17,000 persons, including women and
children, had died due to malnutrition.
Voicing
concern over death of 17,000 persons due to malnutrition in tribal areas of
Maharashtra in the last one year, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday asked the
state government to take immediate steps to tackle it and submit details of
central grants received for tribal welfare. A division bench of Justices V M
Kanade and Swapna Joshi was hearing a bunch of PILs regarding malnutrition
among children in Melghat region of Vidarbha and other tribal areas in
Maharashtra.
One of the
petitioners showed the court a reply received through the Right to Information
(RTI) Act which said over 17,000 persons, including women and children, had
died due to malnutrition in the state in the last one year. The court was also
informed that 283 persons had died in Melghat region during 2015-16 and
additional 83 from January 2016 to July 2016.
“This is a
very serious matter that so many people have died due to malnutrition in the
state. We direct the government to take immediate steps to tackle the menace”,
said the judges. The bench also asked the state to improve the working
conditions of the doctors in tribal areas.
The
Maharashtra government today submitted to the High Court a report of the core
committee formed to tackle the menace of malnutrition in tribal areas. The
government also informed the high court that it did not have enough
gynaecologists, general practitioners and other doctors in tribal areas to
improve the health condition of people particularly women and children.
However, it
had taken measures to improve the health conditions of the people in tribal
areas because of which the number of deaths due to malnutrition had come down,
said the government pleader. The bench sought to know how much grant was
received by the state government from the Centre for development of tribal
areas and asked the administration to file a reply by October 14 on this issue.
A report by
the state Women and Child Development department filed earlier showed that in
Melghat tribal area in Amravati district, 500 children on an average die every
year, against its population of three lakh. In 2013-14, the number of child
deaths rose to 600 and in 2014-15 another 426 children died in just two blocks
of Melghat, the report said.
The high
court had noted that in spite of directives given by it earlier, there was no
significant decline in the child and maternal deaths in these areas as these
directions have not been complied with. “Several reports have been submitted by
UNICEF and other NGOs working in tribal areas. The child deaths is on account
of malnutrition. We have further been told that pediatricians have not been
posted in these areas, further aggravating the problem,” observed Justice
Kanade during the hearing in July 2016.
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