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The last few weeks have been eventful globally, what with Gaza and countries in the Middle-East continuing to make news and Irom Chanu Sharmila from Manipur being released and rearrested within two days. Amid all this, the ice bucket challenge, ostensibly for a "worthy" cause, has been going viral, mainly on the social network.
Most people in India, busy taking up the ice bucket challenge on hot afternoons, often in a bid to figure on page 3 or on the social media, wondered what was AFSP! Yet they are readily donating to an organisation dedicated to research on ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease. The most well-known person afflicted with this disease is physicist Stephen Hawking.
While the fund-raising method is a study in itself, many share the feeling that donating for a cause is one thing but having fun on a serious note is another. In a country like India, already plagued with diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and, to top it all, malnutrition and anemia, to help raise funds for a disease that was never in the sub-continent's radar is nothing less than absurdity. And just where does the money donated to the ALS Association go? A recent report suggests that in the last fiscal, 2013-14, only 27 per cent of its revenue was spent on actual research into ALS. The previous year, they spent only seven per cent on research and mostly on professional education on ALS.
Even if we don't take these into consideration, worldwide, in 2012, 8.5 million people died from ischaemic and hypertensive heart disease; 6.7 million from strokes; 3.1 million from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); 3.1 million from lower respiratory infections; 1.6 million from trachea/bronchus/lung cancer; 1.5 million from HIV/AIDS; 1.5 million from diarrhoea; 1.5 million from diabetes; 1.3 million from road accidents; and 627,000 from malaria. And ALS, a disease more prevalent in the rich countries and afflicting a small population, is not only preventable but curable as well. In any case, research in the rich nations is more on diseases afflicting them rather than those prevalent in the poor countries.
If at all we have to try ice bucket, why not try it for mid-day meal schemes, to eradicate malaria, or the simplest of all ~ to make the autowallah go by the meter or offer a seat to an elderly. Several offshoots have begun already, like the rice-bucket challenge, where rice is distributed to the poor.
