Medicina molecular y genética

Health Awareness Among Tribes of Rural India

Abstract

Kankana De

The tribal populations are is recognised as socially and economically vulnerable. Their lifestyles and food habits are different from that of their rural neighbours. They depend on minor forest produce and manual labour for livelihood. They may not have adequate income. Their food consumption pattern is dependent on the vagaries of nature and varies from extreme deprivation (in the lean seasons) to high intakes (in the post-harvest period). About 21% of them are scheduled castes and 24% are tribes. Purulia suffers from very poor conditions in terms of hygiene, poverty, and lack of safe drinking water, resulting in major health problems such as diarrhoea, malaria, filarial, TB, anaemia, and others. Poor child birth and nutrition standards lead to high IMR and MMR. Open defecation, lack of sanitary latrines, poor educational standards for girl children, and poor awareness of HIV/AIDS also compound Purulia's health and development problems. Tribal people are known to have sexual practices that vary from those of mainstream cultures. Less or nothing is known about the prevalence of HIV and AIDS among tribal people in India, except perhaps in some of the tribal states of the North-East of India as these have high prevalence of drug use. HIV and AIDS has become the fourth largest killer worldwide, and in Asian counterpart which is scattering at an alarming rate. In developing countries, it was estimated that at least half of the non-pregnant and two thirds of the pregnant Women are anaemic. Maternal malnutrition which was quite common among the tribal women was also a serious health problem especially for those having numerous pregnancies too closely spaced and reflected the complex socio-economic factors that affected their overall condition.