Rajnarayan Indu

• Phase I: Investigation of the prevalence rate of fluorosis in 25 villages from Mehsana and Patan districts of Gujarat.
• Phase II: Detailed study of social cost from a sample of 235 households selected from 18 of the 25 villages.

It is difficult to draw any conclusion for this multi-faceted problem of fluorosis or to propose a universally accepted strategy. People need water, so they sink deep wells and eventually harvest poisonous water to an extent unmindfully and are finally caught up in the trap of irreversible fluorosis. The respondents of the study have very poor awareness about water quality and the availability of fluoride-free or de-mineralized water. Even if it is available, their poor affordability prevents them to purchase.

The question arises, what should the state or the people at an individual or collective level do, when the available fluoride content water in the village has to be used ‘willingly-or-unwillingly’? The study suggests the following -

• Developing awareness on fluorosis and fluoride contaminated water in the villages. 
• Providing less expensive water filters (like Activated Alumina Plant being used in Southern Rajasthan) for de-fluoridation at home.
• Developing Cooperative-Captive Plants that could be organized by the villagers and not by external agencies. Instead of a big plant, the government could intervene to set up a plant sized up to village-needs, which can be managed by the villagers themselves.  
• There is a possibility of reducing fluoride from groundwater by mixing river water with groundwater, which is now a practice in North Gujarat.
• Further, groundwater should be recharged using check-dam or any other suitable procedure, which would help reducing fluoride. 

It is time to recognize fluorosis and take some preventive measures and rehabilitate the present victims instead of covering it up behind the mask of Musculo-Skeletal Disease (MSD).

Download the report here: 

The report by Carewater INREM Foundation deals with Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology, which is emerging as an important solution for drinking water treatment in rural Gujarat. RO plants with capacity ranging from 10 litres per hour (lph) to 6000 lph are now supplying drinking water in several hundred villages of the State. Small sized plants with capacity < 20 lph are used by individual families whereas medium to large sized plants (>100 lph) are being used for public consumption.Read More

This study from the coastal villages of Junagadh, Gujarat by Carewater aims at estimating the prevalence of kidney stones in the region and understand its varied socioeconomic impacts in terms of expenses incurred in treatment, procuring good quality water and loss of wages due to inability to work. In Junagadh district of Saurashtra, intrusion of seawater has increased from 3 to 12 kms during the last three decades and more than 130 thousand hectares (about 15 percent) of the total area of Junagadh has been affected by salinity.Read More