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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hot iron in a child's belly -- A district collector's fight against superstition in a MP sistrict -Salik Ahmad

Hot iron in a child's belly -- A district collector's fight against superstition in a MP sistrict -Salik Ahmad

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published Published on Jan 12, 2020   modified Modified on Jan 12, 2020
-Outlook India

A district collector takes it upon himself to rid the region of a degrading practice visited upon sick children—the scourge of daagna

Umaria, Madhya Pradesh, goes to sleep at 7 pm. Or the roads give that impression—quiet and enchantingly deserted. The young (it was carved out of Shahdol in 1998) and small district is also home to Bandhavgarh National Park.

Umaria also has a prevalent malpractice, called daagna, which has its roots in superstition. Under this, village elders or local healers singe a sick child’s belly with hot iron, a piece of bangle, neem wood, or even the sharp end of a sickle. “Children are usually branded when they suffer from pneumonia, when the respiration rate goes up and chest in-drawing happens. Village folks believe it will bring relief, but that’s superstition. Plus, there’s a risk of the wound getting infected,” says Chandra Pal Shakya, a paediatrician at Umaria’s district hospital.

Learning of this when he took over as district collector in March 2019, Swarochish Somavanshi decided to gauge its extent. He told officials to rec­ord instances of daagna along with other indicators like weight, height etc in the biannual survey conducted under Dastak Abhiyaan.

The results showed that 562 kids were found to have been singed through daagna in Umaria. Somavanshi decided to combat it. “People would say, Collector sahab to chhoti si cheez ke peechhe pad gaye hain (The collector is making a big deal of it),” he says, showing photos of children with burnt bellies, even necks, on his phone. In one, the entire chest and belly of an inf­ant is covered with burn marks, as if a hundred cigarettes were stubbed on the little torso. “I dec­ided this is the biggest issue that my district faces,” he adds.

The children are usually subjected to this cruel ‘cure’ when they are ill with pneumonia, or cold, or are suffering from malnourishment, says Shanti Bele, the district programme officer for women and child development. “The practice has a direct connection to nutrition—poor nutrition leads to kwashiorkor, which res­ults in a protruding belly, and marasmus, which causes stomach shrinkage, thereby increasing the chances of their being subjected to daagna. There have been cases where hot iron was put on genitals.”

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Outlook India, 20 January, 2020, https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/india-news-nutrition-warriors-hot-iron-in-a-childs-belly-a-district-collectors-fight-against-superstition-in-a-mp-district/


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