A CPI(ML) Fact-finding team comprising Odisha State Secretary and CCM Khitish Biswal, CCM Maleshwar Rao, Odisha SCMs Comrades Bidyadhar Patra, Madhav Rao, Brundaban Bidika as well as Comrades Pralaya Behera, Sarat Tripathy, Sashi Ben, and Upendra Sahoo visited some of the villages in Rayagada district that are worst-affected by an ongoing cholera epidemic. The epidemic has claimed 156 lives, mostly of tribals, and has affected 287 villages in 13 districts.

The team visited the tribal village of Gadaba in remote Bisam Cuttack block. Of the 16 affected people, 7 died without any medical help, and others were taken by an NGO on makeshift bamboo stretchers to a far-away medical centre, where only a pharmacist was available. There is no clean drinking water, scanty food, no schools or roads.

Next, the team visited Gayal Kana, another tribal village where 3 died recently for lack of any medical care. At Hadsikuli and Kurti villages too the situation was the same. At a health camp run by a pharmacist in Dandapada school of Bisam Cuttack, patients received saline drip and some minimum standard of medical care, but there was no doctor.

The team visited the villages of Tumbitaraoi, Balapai, Lekapai, Ramba, Tala Amlabadi, Upar Amlabadi in the K Singpur block, one of the worst-affected regions. CPI(ML) Liberation youth in these villages have worked to provide relief and carry patients to medical centres, and creating pressure on administration to send doctors to the camps. In the absence of medical care in the first 3-4 days, we lost 4 comrades to the epidemic. In Gayulu Kana village where a recent land struggle took place (Comrade Tirupati Gomango, jailed during this struggle, still remains in jail), 3 struggling comrades tragically died from the disease. The team held a condolence meeting there.

The Odisha Government headed by Naveen Patnaik is criminally responsible for the sheer neglect and denial of medical care and basic sanitation, water and food which have resulted in the epidemic. The Government remains callous to the plight of the victims of the fast-spreading epidemic.

Khitish Biswal