The Health and Sanitation Crisis in India

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India is a thriving country with many possibilities similar to those in the U.S. The country is advancing in technology and is a major tourist attraction throughout the world. Though India is a growing and developing country its lack of resources in health and sanitation to the inner city slums is causing a substantial shift in living conditions and living rates across the country. The lack of sanitary mediums causes substantial health issues among adults and children in these slums. While analyzing the health conditions we can learn about the causes of the sicknesses found in this country and relate it to situations mentioned in the class read “Behind the Beautiful Forever’s” as a first hand information on the sanitation on slums.

In reference to “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” Kathrine Boo shares with the world her experiences in the highly unsanitary Mumbai Slum of Annawadi. Many of her experiences involved scavengers or “trash pickers” and their lack of access to hygienic resources provided by the government. Life to these people is affected by the sewage lake on the slum border. To these people “Sewage and sickness looked like life” (Boo 5). Boo points out a slum dwellers herd of goats that have been affected from drinking the sewage lake water. “Contractors modernizing the airport dumped things in the lake, Annawadians also dumped things there: most recently, the decomposing carcasses of twelve goats” (Boo 7). This lake exposes the people of the slum to disease, some of which from mosquitos carrying malaria.

The people of the slum worry about such toxins in their environment and how it will affect them physically. Manju, one of the slums citizens, was worried about feeling sluggish and if it was due to malaria or deng...

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