The Monsoon Deluge
Thursday, 27 July 2006, 3:30 p.m.
The school mess |
Dharamshala: The onset of monsoon has always been a cause of anxiety for the 700-odd students of the Sherap Gatsel school, nestled in the foot of a hillside, about 4 kilo meters from the (lower) Tibetan Children’s Village School.
More than 90 students had to be hopitalized in about a week at the end of July, when the heavens opened, unleashing an epidemic of a mysterious diarrhoea, which infected some 60 students last year.
“As of now, all the students have recuperated well and are attending classes,” the director of the erstwhile Sogar Lopta, Mr. Jampa, was quoted as saying in an interview to the official Tibetan weekly, Bodmi Rawang.
Mr. Jampa expressed his gratitude for Dr. Tsetan la, the chief medical officer of the Delek Hospital, along with the Zonal hospital, for being extremely thoughtful in his assistance “in those needy hours, when he had to attend two patients on each and every bed”.
Although all tests through both Tibetan and modern systems of medicine have failed to identify the infection, or its cause, the general assumption, he said (given the fact that the infection occurs with the onset of monsoon) points to the nearby polluted stream, which flows from the Bhagsu, and the chemical fertilizers applied to the surrounding fields.
As a precaution, the school is now using the underground water, even for washing purposes, and that for the time being, vegetables have been cut off from the menu of the school mess, Mr Jampa added.
(www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration.)