The Sambhavna Trust Clinic Bhopal members presented results of their community health survey claimed rate of cancer was over 2.5 times more in a population exposed to Union Carbide’s poisonous gas compared to an unexposed population in another part of the city.
The members were addressing a press conference on occassion of World Cancer Day. Additionally, the charitable NGO reported more women with cancer and much higher rate of lung cancer in the gas exposed population.
Explaining the process of information collection, Premchand, Database Administrator said, “Last year we carried out a door-to-door survey in 1483 families of these, the number of gas victims was 6185 residing within 2 kms. of the Union Carbide factory. Alongside, we collected information from 5740 individuals who were living more than 8 kms. away from the factory and were not affected by the gas disaster of 1984. Only those with a diagnosis from a recognized clinic or hospital were included in the survey.”
“Additionally, we found that among those with cancer in the two groups, women were 32 % of the gas exposed and 15% of unexposed individuals. We identified one person with lung cancer in the unexposed population while there were 8 persons with lung cancer in the gas exposed population.” said Community Worker, Tasneem Zaidi.
Elaborating further on the survey, Community Worker Farhat Jahan said, ”We took great care in choosing the communities so that both exposed and unexposed populations were matched in social and economic conditions. We also collected information on related matters such as tobacco consumption, and curiously, we found that the proportion of smokers and tobacco chewers were one and half times more in the unexposed population.”
Running since 1996, the Sambhavna Clinic has provided long term care to over 36 thousand persons exposed to toxic gas and contaminated ground water.
The Sambhavna Trust, a registered charitable NGO that runs the Clinic, has won several national and international awards and the Clinic’s research has been published in international scientific journals.
