Street Children- “The innocent victims of abuse”

Posted by: jisha in slums, homeless, children on Mar 24, 2009 Print PDF

One third of world's poor children are in India. With a population of a Billion and growing, Indian children, especially those growing up on the streets of India encounter a bleak future. Most of them cared less about future as they played with their cheap toys and siblings. It is amazing with what trash they can play. The poor children are always victims of abuse. These homeless children usually found living in slums or streets. They are forced to do any work even at their very small age. They scavenge through the dirt and filth for things that can be reused and recyclable. These children are prone to any illness as they rummage through the rubbish dump.

Such is the case of the children in Okhla, New Delhi. Children of small age goes through the trash collecting the syringes like seashells from a beach. Their hands scratched and bleeding, the "rag pickers" rinse the syringes and sell them back to the doctors for 10 or so rupees a batch - about 14p. Sometimes the children use them as water pistols, or drink from them. Or they string the pump gaskets together to make jewellery. And when they get ill, their desperate parents take them to the doctor - for an injection( Times Online).

It is shocking to know that around the world 1.3m people die each year from receiving unsafe medical injections. India faces the greatest threat. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in India alone, 300,000 people die every year as a result of dirty syringes. In India, the average person has three to five medical injections per year. Around 62% of these will be delivered by unsterile or reused syringes. The syringe that is reused may carry lethal infections such as hepatitis B or C, or HIV. The Times Online reports that the problem is not limited to slums or rural villages but private and government hospitals are also reusing syringes. Thousands of people are entering hospitals with minor ailments and leaving with life-threatening infections because practitioners won't spend money on new equipment, or simply don't know any better.

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