chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)100CHAPTER 5slums of the Indian capital, New Delhi, many health indices, such as infant mortality,are worse than in rural areas, which were long considered to suffer the worst ravages ofpoverty and deprivation. Like other big developing country metropolises, New Delhiattracts migrants from rural areas in search of work and what they hope will be a betterlife. For instance, many were attracted to the city by the prospect of jobs in constructionas the city set about putting in place the necessary infrastructure for the AsianGames in 1982. Ironically, many of those workers who settled with their families inthe Pashta slums on the banks of the Yamuna River have now found themselves amongthe 150,000 people who have been made homeless as the courts ordered a 40-hectare(100-acre) strip along the Yamuna to be cleared for a riverside promenade close to a keysite for 2010’s Commonwealth Games.In New Delhi, slum dwellers make up over 40 per cent of the population. Peopledefecate outside in the fields or the drains, according to Asha, a non-governmentalorganization (NGO) that works with slum dwellers to improve their living conditions.Residents are exposed to stagnant water, open drains, floods, rubbish, and noise andair pollution. It is little wonder that people get sick. Open sewers are just one of theunsanitary aspects of slum conditions. In addition to helping the spread of dysentery,cholera and other preventable diseases, the water contains parasites such as hookworm,whipworm and roundworm that infect the slum dwellers and children in particular.In a country with a fast-growing economy and a middle class larger than that of theUnited States, New Delhi is also a glaring example of the health inequalities to befound in big cities. “There is a stark dichotomy here. On the one hand, Delhi has agood health infrastructure with excellent health facilities, which are, in fact, better thanother parts of the country. For instance, it is possible to have a heart transplant here, ata cost. Yet, the urban poor cannot access even the most basic of healthcare facilities,”said Thomas Chandy of Save the Children India.Sometimes, people living in slums and informal settlements do not even show upon official population statistics, so it is little surprise if health and other services arealso not provided. The population of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince was 700,000,according to the last official census taken in 2003. But the real number is more thanthree times higher. “You see people moving for economic need into unplanned periurbanenvironments, with a great deal of overcrowding, re-creating the conditionsof the 19th century. It is as if none of the lessons of the 19th century health movementhad been learned,” said Michael J. Ryan, director of WHO’s Global Alert andResponse department.Children bear the bruntChildren are most at risk from the precarious sanitary and health conditions reigningin slum areas. UN-Habitat’s State of the World’s Cities 2006/7 report states that