The Bhopal health saga - battling for survival every day (25 years after Bhopal gas leak)

BHOPAL - More than 3,500 people died that night and 7,000 more in the next three days; and 25 years later, 6,000 people visit hospitals every day and about 120,000-150,000 people in the city continue to be ill. The Bhopal gas leak is a continuing tragedy told through countless tales from those who survived and those not even born on Dec 2/3, 1984.

Diseases of the eyes, lungs, liver and kidney, loss of sensation in the limbs, cancer, menstrual irregularities, depression, hypertension, infertility, mental disorders… the victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster continue to wage a daily battle on the health front.

Hazira B, who still lives in JP Nagar opposite the Union Carbide plant from where over 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaked out on the night of Dec 2/3, says it would have been better had they died.

“My entire family suffers from breathlessness, body pain and weak eyesight. My daughter suffers from fainting fits while my youngest son has tuberculosis. I have had two miscarriages before reaching menopause at 39,” said the 51-year-old mother of three who was deserted by her husband a few years after the disaster.

There are many like her, still reeling from the after effects that are too many to list. Besides those directly impacted were the pregnant women, many of whose children were born with genetic defects and mental retardation. The reproductive cycle of women, the quality of their breast milk and menstrual cycles were impacted too.

“I had my first pregnancy aborted while running for a safer place after the gas leak. I never conceived again as menstruation stopped. The gas left me infertile and also gave me several other diseases,” said Pyari Bai, 42.

NGOs estimate that 120,000 to 150,000 residents of Bhopal continue to be ill. Clinics report a regular stream of patients with a host of diseases.

In a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari this week, activists Abdul Jabbar and N.D. Jayprakash said: “The grievousness of the injuries suffered by the victims are such that even 25 years after the disaster no less than 6,000 victims continue to visit hospitals every day due to disaster-related ailments.”

Mohammed Ali Qaiser, who has been treating gas victims at the Sambhavna Clinic for several years, says problems have also increased manifold because people continue to be affected by the contaminated groundwater.

According to Qaiser: “Every day, more than 150 people visit our clinic. They include those who have been exposed to toxic gases in December 1984, their children and those exposed to contaminated groundwater.”

A preliminary house-to-house survey by the Sadbhavna Trust that runs the clinic estimates that the incidence of birth defects in Bhopal is at least 10 times that of the national figure.

It’s a sorry saga that is yet to be fully studied.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) studied the gas victims from 1984 to 1994.

“The treatment of the victims is impeded to this day because Union Carbide refused to share all its medical information on the toxic effects of the gases released that night and with all research and monitoring of the long-term health effects of ‘gases’ being abandoned in 1994, no treatment protocols have been found so far,” said Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), who also runs the Sambhavna clinic.

Also, there has been no scientific follow-up nor any study on the long-term impact of MIC on the reproductive tracts of men and women since 1994 when ICMR stopped its research. Gynaecological disorders are not even listed among effects of MIC exposure in official records.

“Generations of women were affected by the gas. Among women who were pregnant at the time of the disaster, 43 percent aborted. For several years, spontaneous abortion rates remained very high. And now girls who were exposed in infancy and in their mother’s wombs are experiencing ‘menstrual chaos’,” added Sarangi.

These conditions are also leading to social problems. Rehana of JP Nagar, who has three daughters, speaks of the stigma.

“Men don’t like to marry our daughters because they feel that these girls cannot produce children. There have been cases of our girls getting married and divorced soon after. One girl was divorced after she gave birth to two children, because of irregular menses.”

Besides, children of affected parents, conceived and born after the disaster, were significantly different from children of the same age born to unexposed parents, reports a study carried out by Sambhavna Trust.

“Such children were shorter, thinner, lighter and had smaller heads. Also, they showed abnormal growth of the upper part of their bodies - disproportionately smaller than their lower bodies,” it states.

(Sanjay Sharma can be contacted at sanjay.s@ians.in)