Nada India Foundation News update

In politics and administration, the touchstone of leadership is compassion. This quality was displayed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar when he announced ₹4 lakh as ex gratia for the families of those who died after consuming spurious liquor in the state. Despite the tragic deaths of over 26 people in East Champaran district, Kumar initially declared that no compensation would be given, emphasizing that those who consume alcohol “will die” and urging against drinking. However, the pressing human dimension of the crisis prompted him to extend assistance to every affected family.  In parallel, the recent tragedy in Tamil Nadu's Kallakurichi saw over 40 women widowed due to their husbands consuming methanol-laced illicit liquor.  The Madras High Court questioned the Tamil Nadu government's decision to award ₹10 lakh as ex gratia to these families, expressing concerns that such compensation might encourage the consumption of illicit liquor. Acting Chief Justice R Mahadevan an...

  30 March 2021   Sh.Anil Baijal, Lieutenant Governor Delhi, Esteemed Sir,  Greetings from the Healthy India Alliance!   The Healthy India Alliance is a coalition of 13 Indian Multi-disciplinary Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), working collaboratively to strengthen CSO capacity and engagement for Non Communicable Disease (NCD) prevention and control in the country.     We are writing to you in reference to the recent amendment made on 22-March-21 regarding the Delhi’s Excise Policy. Through this letter we would like to express our concerns over ensuring lesser availability, affordability and acceptability to alcohol. The new amendment poses a threat to the future of Delhi as it will seriously affect the safety and health standards of youth and young adults. Keeping in mind the best interest of Child Rights conventions and the goals of building a drug free and healthy Delhi, we express our support against the new excise policy amendment using the evi...

by   Suneel Vatsyayan Posted on May 16 '19, in  Alcohol's Harm To Others ,  IOGT ,  Obstacle To Development ,  Policy ,  Prevention ,  Recovery ,  Research ,  Sustainable Development Alcohol: major obstacle to development The situation of women’s safety here in Bihar was such that women would not step outside their homes beyond 6 pm. Alcohol fueled domestic violence had been accepted inside the homes to such an extent that there had been about 85 women in the village who committed suicide seeing no escape.” Ritu Jaiswal, a local politician in Bihar  explains how alcohol hinders sustainable development  in Bihar, India. Already many years before, in March 2013, Bihari women started protesting alcohol fueled harm in public. “Humari aabroo ki keemat pe sharab ka dhandha nahi chalega.” (The sale of liquor will not continue at the cost of our honour.) The chant echoed through Konar, a village near the town of Sasaram in...

OPINION  :  Hooch Victims: Not Just Numbers! Prof. T K Thomas  12 Feb, 2019 at 13:59 PM Picture courtesy  Hooch tragedy death toll seems to have become just numbers! The coverage of the tragedy last week, that struck mourners from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh returning after a funeral in Uttarakhand was perfunctory and the death toll had risen to almost 100 when reports last came in. What is unusual about it? Don’t we have statistics of major death tolls in hooch tragedies? In the last decade it is reported that at least a thousand people perished drinking illicit liquor. It is as if such large number of deaths is a routine affair and these human lives seems to have no value and are considered just numbers. The loss of human life, one or hundred in rail, road or air accident; building collapse or fire; medical negligence or an epidemic, stampede or terror attack has to be viewed as loss of precious human lives. It does not matter whether the victims are mal...

With India having the largest number of   Tuberculosis  patients in the world, we definitely encounter high proportion of alcohol and drug users with TB (approx. 2 in 10 alcohol and drug users are diagnosed with TB). At present India does'nt have any screening mechanisms in place to identify asymptomatic TB patients at the drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres but data is collected on the basis of self reporting and screening of symptomatic patients. Any patient at the drug /alcohol rehabilitation centre showing symptoms of TB is referred for TB testing and if identified as TB positive these patients are sent for TB treatment but are never usually followed up or retained for alcohol de-addiction treatment. The patients are sent back home and don't continue their stay at the center potentially due to lack of infection control facilities at the rehabilitation centre. Even recently at the community conversation for NCD voices on Our Views, Our Voices" conducted by Nada ...

 SAFER – a new WHO initiative to boost national alcohol policy processes Published 10. 10 2018 by  Dag Endal WHO recently launched a new action package – SAFER. It aims at supporting the global target of reducing harmful use of alcohol by 10% by 2025. The initiative has been strongly supported by several global civil society networks. SAFER is a WHO-led roadmap to support governments in taking practical steps to accelerate progress on health, beat non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through addressing the harmful use of alcohol, and to achieve sustainable development targets. The SAFER package provides technical guidance on five high-impact strategic actions that are prioritized for implementation to promote health and development: S trengthen restrictions on alcohol availability. A dvance and enforce drink driving countermeasures. F acilitate access to screening, brief interventions, and treatment. E nforce bans or comprehensive restrictions on alcohol advertis...

I OGT Statements   71st Regional Committee Meeting WHO SEARO New Delhi, India, September 3 – 7, 2018 The  Seventy-first Session of the Regional Committee of the World Health Organization Regional Office For South-East Asia  convened in Hotel Taj Mahal, New Delhi, India. Side Event on Preparation for the UN General Assembly High-Level Meetings on Tuberculosis and NCD prevention and control,  IOGT International statement , by   Mr Suneel Vatsyayan , IOGT International regional representative  Alcohol is a major and cross-cutting obstacle to universal health coverage and the SDGs..... Suneel Vatsyayan Agenda item 8.5: Annual report on monitoring progress on UHC and health-related SDGs,  IOGT International statement , by Mr Suneel Vatsyayan

CIVIL SOCIETY STATEMENT ...... Nada India is a c o-signing organisation ,  Time to Deliver in 2018: Bolder Commitments and Action Needed to Reverse the Tide of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health Disorders Wednesday 6 June 2018  The NCD Alliance and Nada India Foundation  welcome the Report of the WHO Independent High Level Commission on Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs), Time To Deliver, launched on Friday 1 June in Geneva, Switzerland, ahead of crucial negotiations for the United Nations High-Level Meeting on NCDs (UN HLM) taking place in New York this coming September. The Commission's report draws a line in the sand on the need for political leaders to accept that progress to date has been severely inadequate and out of step with the growing burden of NCDs and mental and neurological health. All evidence points to the same unpleasant reality: that if the current pace of progress continues unabated, by 2030 the agreed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target...