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APARIGRAHA - THE HUMANE SOLUTION
of relief that many diseases had been eradicated but the factors mentioned above have made us rethink about our views and make us realise that our complacency is misplaced. Tuberculosis which was thought to have been eradicated, is coming back in a big way. The treatment of this disease is very expensive specially for the poor, they discontinue taking the drugs thinking that they have recovered as the symptoms have reduced considerably, but they do not realise that millions of tuberculor bacteria are still surviving within their bodies, that now become immune to the drugs. These surviving bacteria come out when the patient coughs occasionally and then these nasty drug resistant bacteria find new victims. Thus the victims multiply. Similar problems are being noticed regarding other diseases also; malaria parasites are learning to build up molecular defences and resistance to drugs which is alarmingly harmful. “We seem to be more happy about the declining trend of incidence but are least concerned about the rising trend of the drug resistant parasites" says Dr. Amitabh Nandy of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine. “A drug resistant parasite is automatically more virulent and robust” he says further. This resistance of parasites can make many control programmes almost futile. The doctors and health workers feel helpless and even frustrated with such a situation. Who could have imagined the Surat plague tragedy taking place almost at the end of 20th century! when plague had been completely eradicated in India long back. All this is said with the intention that neglect of environment means only selfdestruction through the forms of diseases in addition to other forms.
In a thought provoking article Dr. Ramashraya Sharma expresses the view, that in the depth of sea, bosom of earth and infinite space of sky man seems to have reached the mystery of nature in an unprecedented manner. The objects of use and those of consumption have been produced equally unprecedentedly. The fast means of transport in water, surface and air have come up beyond one's imagination. The world has become surprisingly small, but in spite of this all-round development in this age of science in a short span of two hundred years, man has been pushed to his original state of loneliness, when he used to live in the jungle and worry about nothing but himself.
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