Over 100 students of the Telangana Tribal Welfare Residential school for boys in Kulkacharla, Vikarabad district have fallen sick with symptoms like cold, cough and fever, possibly due to their environment or water contamination, health officials said on Tuesday, August 30. Students have alleged that the drinking water supplied at the hostel is not safe and that there are also a lot of mosquitoes due to unclean surroundings. Students also alleged that they were being forced to defecate in the surrounding fields and were chased away for doing so, while the toilets at the hostel remained inoperative. This is the latest in a series of incidents reported from various social welfare residential schools in the state where many students have fallen ill due to multiple reasons including food poisoning, in several districts including Vikarabad, Adilabad, Kumuram Bheem Asifabad, Mancherial, Karimnagar, Rajanna Sircilla, Sangareddy, Kamareddy, and Nalgonda.
A health official, who is part of a Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK, a National Health Mission initiative) camp set up at the school over the past two days, told the media that medical tests were conducted on around 250 students, and medicines were given to around 100 students who had a cold, cough, typhoid like symptoms, fever, etc. “The common symptoms were light fever, cold, cough, body pain, back pain etc.,” he said, adding that the reason for the illness could be their environment or a problem with the drinking water.
An official of the residential school told the media that they have been facing issues with the drinking water supply for a while now. “For bathing and washing clothes, we use water from a lake. For drinking, we use bore water. We got a connection under Mission Bhagiratha (the state government’s drinking water supply project) recently but the water supply hasn’t begun yet. There is an RO (reverse osmosis) plant for water purification that was allotted around six to seven years back, but it needs repair,” he said, adding that the underground water tank being used is cleaned once a week but is yet to be cleaned this week. He blamed the students for the lack of bathroom and toilet facilities, claiming that the students had broken down the doors and damaged the toilets as they preferred to defecate in the open and were looking for an excuse to do so.
The students on the other hand alleged that they were facing problems due to open defecation in the fields, as they had been chased away and beaten for doing so. “We are having problems with the water and bathrooms. Around 150 students have fallen sick. There is also a problem of mosquitoes and odour near the classrooms as the surroundings are not cleaned properly, because of which many are falling sick,” a student told reporters.