Every minute one Indian dies of tuberculosis. In that way every day approximately 1,440 fall victim to this dreaded disease. By this estimate the annual toll is 525,600 – or roughly just half a million. This is not the figment of anyone’s imagination, but the figure given by Dr L S Chauhan, Director General (TB) at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare sometimes back. He says that in India around 1.8 million new cases of TB are reported every year. And almost all these half a million who succumb to this infection come from the poorest section of society. Lowly paid carpet, button, bidi, agarbatti, quilt-makers, those engaged in unorganised sectors, miners, rickshaw-pullers, landless farm labourers, scavengers, etc., and their family members are mostly the victims of this disease in the 21st century India. They are malnourished from the day of their birth – or even before – and live in the most unhygienic condition.
Wait a moment. Ever since the present generation, including me, heard of swine flu three months ago just about 600 cases have been reported in India (598 to be precise till August 5, 2009). And only one girl, Rida Sheikh, died in Pune. According to the World Health Organisation the total number of confirmed cases the world over till July 31, 2009 was 162,380. Out of this 1,154 died in these three months or so. Thus out of every 1,000 who fell sick only six died while the rest got treated and are hale and hearty. Since in India only one girl, out of total 600 reported cases died and 482 of those who fell ill have been discharged, there is absolutely no reason to create panic. The maximum the media and the government should do is to make the people alert about the impact of the disease and advise them about the remedies and medicines.
But what is the private Indian media doing? The manner in which the whole TV-watchers and newspaper-readers have been taken to ransom after Rida’s death raises strong suspicion in the mind of many. One cannot blame the government, at least, on this count. It might have been slow in response, but it did not create unnecessary fear in the minds of the countrymen and women. The government-run Doordarshan and All India Radio were much balanced on the issue of swine flu coverage. The government should instead take those media barons to task who are instilling false fear in the entire country. Even their business motive should be probed.
Have some big pharmaceutical multi-national companies and private hospitals any vested interests in overplaying the seriousness of the impact of swine flu? Why are swine flu, bird flu, AIDS, etc., blown out of proportion and diseases like TB, cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid, etc., which take huge toll of life every year, virtually being blacked out?
Even in the country where swine flu has really taken a heavy toll of life or affected much larger number of people the media have not gone hysteric. Only the other day the health minister of Delhi, Kiran Walia, declared that swine flu is still the disease of the elite, that is why the education ministry has not asked the schools of Delhi Municipal Corporation to take precautionary measures. On the other hand the public schools, be it in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore or elsewhere have started taking precautionary steps. In a few cases schools have even been closed and students with fever not allowed to enter the class.
Since swine flu virus has come, loaded in airplane, directly from the United States and the West many of us are proudly proclaiming that we have joined the elite club of nations having this disease. They think that the more we highlight the stories of the swine flu the more developed we will be rated by the global leaders. The Indians, who dream in English and not their mother tongue, even wish to die – or suffer – like their western friends, or say masters.
Those manning and running CNN-IBN, Times Now, NDTV, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, so on and so forth are suffering from serious and, at the same time incurable, inferiority complex. Advising the government to take preventive measures is one thing, but creating such havoc about the disease, as has so far taken only one life, is quite different.
The big names in the world of print media never get space to make the news about half a million death due to TB in any given year the eight-column first page banner headline of their newspapers. The channels do not get time to discuss or debate the issue in the prime time programme. They will claim that they would lose advertisement and their TRP rating will fall. They have another readymade argument: Such news would create a bad impression about India and would turn the investment away. So if at all publish it, better take it in the inside page and give much smaller space.
Swine flu, bird flu, AIDS, etc. sell as they sound modern but not TB, dysentery, diarrhoea, typhoid etc. These public opinion-makers try to pretend that we have overcome all these old diseases long back. By highlighting high-sounding diseases – swine flu, bird flu, AIDS, etc. – we would be on par with the West.
It is the media hype of bird flu that led to the culling of millions of chickens in India – at times there was absolutely no need for it. All this hype when perhaps not a single Indian died of bird flu in the recent months. But the media have no time to discuss those who hardly get any chicken to eat as their pockets do not allow – or their scanty dress have no extra piece of cloth to make pocket.
So far as AIDS is concerned, it has now been established beyond doubt by experts, one of them a Nobel Prize winning doctor, that this syndrome was grossly overplayed by pharmaceutical giants to earn a few fast bucks. Initially AIDS sounded like the epidemic of the West. But when the West discovered the medicine it passed the disease onto the East, especially poor Africa. Now the Indian media is in a dilemma. Today if they play up AIDS cases they fear that their country would be equated with Africa and not counted in the big league of the US and Europe. Thus the coverage on AIDS now is in fits and starts. Some experts have even started questing, what they say, the inflated figure of AIDS victims in India.