Friday, February 2, 2001

Sewage flowing from Dasarahalli and Nagasandra lakes
to Madavara lake. DH photo

Polluted lake affects hospital services

DH News Service
BANGALORE, Feb 1

The 60-acre Madavara lake, on the City’s outskirts has stridently announced its highly polluted state by drastically affecting and almost closing down the medical services offered to thousands of poor patients by the Jindal Group of Industries.

Their Manav Charitable Hospital on the banks of this lake has been reeling under a stench so horrendous from this severely contaminated water body that all the official bodies approached by the hospital staff have been flummoxed by the sheer magnitude of the problem.

At certain spots, the sewage has invaded the very grounds of the hospital through a nala that runs through its compound and a foul stench lingers on the ‘health walk’ designed for patients!

After appealing in vain to the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, the Department of Environment and Ecology, the Department of Health and the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, the Trust’s members finally met Minister of State for Minor Irrigation Kumar Bangarappa who has assured them that he will immediately set up a committee to look into the problem and come up with a quick solution since Madavara lake belongs to the Minor Irrigation department.

Meanwhile the Chief Engineer, Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, told Deccan Herald: ‘’We are asking our consultant to look at this lake and come up with a solution.

We will certainly try to solve the problem. Our 30 mld sewage treatment plant is coming up in Nagasandra village and we will try to include the four remaining villages near Jindal which are at present not included in this project.”
The Hospital’s Medical Superintendent, Dr M L Kadambalithaya says that for the past one-and-a-half years, Madavara has become so heavily choked with untreated raw sewage from the four surrounding villages and numerous small industries and hotels around it that foul fumes from it have driven most of the hospital staff (only 40 out of 200 remain) and even patients away from it.

Excellent and virtually free service to the poor including eye surgeries and free medicines have been severely curtailed.
Its formerly overcrowded inpatient department now wears a gloomy look with a 100 empty beds and dusty equipment.
Surgeries had to be stopped due to the stench and filth in the nearby lake increasing the risk of infections.
Only the outpatient department is still working but the number of patients being seen has come down from 1,000 a day to about 300.

The trust had to close down its Mahila Arts and Crafts Institute too which was providing training to the women in the area.

The trust has told the various departments concerned that the tank has got choked up with raw sewage coming from several villages — Nagasandra, Chikkabidarakallu, Manjunath Nagar, Thimmiah Colony etc as well as from the nearby Nagasandra and Dasarahalli lakes which are also polluted. All these villages are not covered by the BWSSB and are in urgent need of amenities.

The treatment plant being planned by the board is reportedly not going to cover these villages as they are on a slope and would add to the project cost.

The situation has worsened in the last three years and the hospital is unable to get any staff willing to work in such unhealthy surroundings.

This is one instance where the neglect of a lake is leading to the poorest of the poor being deprived of free health care, say the trust authorities.