Something to look forward to : Health clubs

Here is an interesting proposition made by the Government. They want to set up health clubs in schools in Bangalore, just like they did Science clubs last year. These clubs will consist of students from Classes 8, 9 and 10 and it is set up to create awareness amongst students about physical and mental health, and cleanliness.

It is a great way to go about spreading awareness on health issues, involving the students themselves. This will get them to engage with the subject much more than if they were told to mug it off a textbook. There is scope for peer learning as well as practical application of this learning while they conduct health camps and invite psychiatrists for counselling sessions. Students can set up workshops for themselves and other students and help each other understand health issues and see what creative solutions they can come up with to battle it by themselves. Here is the link to the article in DNA, Bangalore which talks about these health clubs.

http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_coming-soon-health-clubs-in-bangalore-schools_1427846

Visiting a scientist

I am waiting to get access to some fluoride testing kits so that I can visit C.K Pura again. I have been trying to find the chemicals needed for that, but in vain. Am still contacting people who might have them. I think I might just have found one!

Meanwhile, Mr.Vishwanath calmed me down by suggesting that I visit Professor Kesava Rao at IISc. He teaches in the Chemical Engineering department and works with treatment of drinking water, focusing on de-fluoridation. He was very kind and agreed to meet me right away. I spoke to him about what I was doing and asked him a few questions on effects of fluoride, de-fluoridation techniques and kits and he gave me a tour of his lab to look at projects that his students and himself have been working on.

Professor Kesava Rao

The first one was an M.E students thesis where he has built a device using a simple lunch box and a photo diode. A set of reagents are used to calibrate the resistance it offers which is then plotted on a graph to find out how much fluoride the sample contains. It is work in progress but it works! Something like this is easy to build as well as cost effective. Each box costs about Rs.250 (of course the chemicals and the gadgets apart) but would still work out lesser than testing the sample in a lab where they charge 1500-2000 rupees is what I was told. Here is a video of the professor explaining it to me.

Solar Still

This is another neat device that I was shown. It is a low-tech way of distilling water, powered by the heat of the sun. In a solar still, impure water is contained outside the collector, where it is evaporated by sunlight shining through the glass. The pure water vapor (and any other included volatile solvent) condenses on the cool inside surface and drips down off of the weighted low point, where it is collected in a bottle and removed. It distils and most impurities, I was told, including arsenic and fluorine. Volatile impurities also escape while it is heated up by the sun. It costs around Rs.850 to make a 0.5 sq ft/mt solar still. It has its advantages and disadvantages of course. The sun needs to be bright and out for this to work. It could also, at times be used to harvest rainwater and thus could even be a good idea to have in these villages since it requires low maintenance and cost. Here is a short clip of the one set up in the department terrace. They are soon going to take it to a fluoride affected area to test it and get some field data.

The last method was using activated Alumina (Aluminium Oxide)

The water is passed through a tube filled with activated alumina which absorbs the fluoride in the water to give out pure water. This powder though, gets saturated after a while and needs to be desaturated with some chemicals (which in turn become highly acidic). Thus it requires quite a bit of monitoring and maintenance once in a while. They are trying to reduce the costs so that this can be implemented. The water is stored in a plastic drum as seen in the first image and flows through the pipe, through the activated alumina (the powder in the second image) and comes out through the nozzle.

Sorry for the bad image quality! I wasn't aware that one could take videos inside the lab! Next time I'll make sure I take a better camera, these were shot on my cell phone.

This is a small part of a chart they have put up outside their lab on fluoride and flurosis and various methods of distillation that they are working on.

Water testing

I got permission to visit the village again, just to immerse myself and talk a little more to the children and community. The last visit was a little hurried and short for me to get many insights. Mr.Vishwanath suggested that I take a fluoride testing kit with me. He also gave me a set of H₂S strip test bottles. I got them home with me to see how I could use them. The manual itself might need some help, but the instructions and reason behind each step is very clearly given. This kit contained 2 glass cylinders, a sample collection bottle, 2 bottles of Zirconyl Alizarin reagent and some ph paper. My room almost looked like my school chemistry lab while I was setting this equipment up! I liked that :)

Before trying to use the kit, I read up a little on why one needs to test for fluoride in water.

‘Excessive presence of fluoride in ground water and their health effects have become a major geo-environmental issue in many parts of the world, including India. Fluorosis is an endemic disease caused by intake of F in quantities more than permissible limit for a prolonged time. Long term intake of F ( > 1.5 ppm) leads to three types of abnormalities; dental fluorosis (teeth), skeletal fluorosis (bones) and non skeletal manifestations. Latest reports indicate that less fluoride is always better in water. According to Indian standards of drinking water, desirable limit for fluoride is 1mg/l which may exceed to 1.5mg/l. Fluoride may be kept as low as possible.

Sources: Naturally by rocks and minerals, tobacco, tooth paste and powder, tea, preservatives and medicines.

Here is a link by the India Water Portal on Fluoride water testing kits and other quality testing kits

http://indiawaterportal.org/node/1123

I was given H₂S test bottles as well. These are used for testing the bacteriological content in water. It is a bottle in which the sample of water to be tested is put in. In the bottle, is a slide made of an inert plastic material coated with a nutrient. It is then shut and kept for a period of several hours or overnight. If, at the end of this period, the slide has acquired or changed colour it is an indication that the sample is contaminated. Tests for bacteriological contamination using such kits only indicate the presence or absence of contamination (also called a GO/NO GO result) and not its extent.

I tested the PH of the water I drink from the aqua-guard today! There was a PH strip test within the fluoride kit. It was around 7. The ph of normal portable water is around 6-8. I am hoping to show the children in the school how this works and make them test the water they use by themselves.

Not evolution, but a revolution in education

"And doing that, I think is the answer to the future because it's not about scaling a new solution; it's about creating a movement in education in which people develop their own solutions, but with external support based on a personalized curriculum."

"Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving a broken model. What we need -- and the word's been used many times during the course of the past few days -- is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else."

These very inspiring and powerful quotes are from the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson where he makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish. I found this on a Anushka's blog. Both of us are working with children and looking at how their different needs can be addressed through working with them in new ways. This talk was really inspiring and makes me feel like I am in the right place doing the right thing!

Comparison of the three schools

Name of school	No. Of students + teachers	Classes	Water	Awareness	Fluoride level
Mangalavada	295 + 9	1 to 7	Bore well water used in taps/ hand pumps	Very less. Interested in knowing and maintaining	2.82 ppm
C.K. Pura HPS		1 to 7	Bore well water used in taps. No drinking water in school	Administration interested in the RW systems. Kids are unaware	2.2 ppm
Rashtrapragathi High school	160+3	7 to 10	Bore water stored in a big tank to wash hands and plates	Little more aware of the water being contaminated etc. Students very eager to learn.	2.2 ppm

Visit to C.K. Pura

Yesterday was my long awaited site visit day and I left Bangalore at 5.45 am to reach Tumkur by 8 am. I was lost, but the scenic beauty kept me walking aimlessly till I found the office I needed to go to. The weather was just perfect and it already seemed like a good start. From there, I was taken to Pavagada taluk by car by the project coordinator from BIRD-K. It is practically inaccessible by road otherwise and the buses, I was told, would take too long. On both sides were lush green patches and hills and occasional ponds that made it picture perfect.

En route to Pavagada Taluk

We reached mid-day and I visited three schools in C.K Pura, a small village part of the Pavagada taluk, a taluk which comprises of more than 300 such villages.

C.K. Pura entance

BIRD-K office in C.K. Pura

Frankly I was amazed at the quality and maintenance of these Government schools. One would imagine that schools in such villages might not be attended to as much, but the campuses are inviting, exciting and there is a lot of scope for children to learn and play, only the exposure and awareness in missing. The first school I visited was

Magalavada HPS (Higher Primary School)

This is a government school with 295 students and 9 staff members. It has 12 rooms and classes from standard 1 to 7. This school is a chosen spot for the building of a rainwater harvesting tank and the teachers are excited about this prospect. (i.e. there is willingness to help maintain school property so that the children can get clean water). The government provides them with rice and some vegetables and this is used to cook mid-day meals for the children (rice and sambar).

Building and courtyard of Magalavada HPS

Kitchen where the mid-day meals are cooked

They are aware of the high fluoride levels in their water, but do not know what it is exactly and what to do about it. The current source of water is a bore well from which water is pumped up and used from taps and hand pumps. There is just enough water to cook and clean that the children carry bottles of water from home, to drink during their school hours. Even though medical check-ups are mandatory once a year, it is hardly ever conducted. A few people come, take a look at 5-10 children at one go and go back. Due to this, they are not even aware of which child might be affected by what disease or condition. A few of them are anaemic and the doctors have provided them with pills that the school makes sure they have every day. They say that this is what the government provides them with and they can’t afford anything else; not even tamarind and groundnuts, food items that help with the fluoride levels. There was an Aquaguard that the government had provided the school with, but the teachers did not know what to do with it and how to work it. So it lies in the office connected to nothing. They store water in plastic pots with lids for drinking.

An Aquaguard that is not fixed due to lack of information on how to use it

Storage of water for drinking in closed plastic containers

In this school, the teachers were even aware of how many kids had anaemia. They mentioned that medical check-ups were mandatory twice a year, but it never really happens that way. The doctors come once in a few months, to check a few of the kids and the school is provided with vitamins for children with deficiencies and anaemia. They teachers make sure the children eat these tablets.

The second one was C.K. Pura HPS, a sweet little campus with small hut like structures for classes. There are students from grade 1 to 7 in this school as well. It has a very well maintained garden and play area but the sanitation conditions are abysmal. The soak pits are clogged and hence the toilets cannot be used and the children go out near the big natural tank behind the school to relieve themselves and they wash up there before coming back to school. This is a problem for the girl children. Students here also bring a bottle of water with them from home, to drink due to unavailability of enough drinking water in the school campus. Many of these students are affected by dental fluorosis and they are not aware of what it is and how they got it. When asked, one student asked if it was because she didn’t brush right.

Entrance to the school

Garden/play area in the school

Children carry bottles of water to drink, from their houses

The last school I went to was Rastrapragathi High School. This is just one building with 3 rooms and a big play field. This is an amazing set-up because it started off as an initiative to encourage girl children to attend school. It was initially only for girls, but now, slowly it has expanded to accommodate a few boys too. This is a government supported private school. The government provides these children with cycles to go from their house to school everyday. This is also a great way of encouraging them to attend school. Only question though, is why only this one? It also provides them with uniforms. Since it began as a girls school, there is a small useable toilet at the side of the school as well. There is one large tank where children drink water from and also wash their plates after mid-day meals. Here, the children were more aware of the water conditions. When asked the same question about dental fluorosis, they replied saying that they knew it is because of bad water. They also wanted to know what they could do to make it go away.

Boys who have recently joined the school initially intended to encourage girls to attend school

Children affected by dental fluorosis. It is a common sight in these schools