Tonight my boy is near me, sleeping soundly while I read this story about the effect of toxic waste on poor children in Bhopal, India. It reminds me of the story of Crizel, a girl who lived on a former US base here in the Philippines and who died of cancer. Her family believed the cancer was caused by toxic waste left at the former US base.
There were others like Crizel, but I don’t know what happened to them. Like so many other stories, it died a natural death when we ran out of new things and issues to write about.
Except that the story is not really dead: I see it repeated, over and over again. Only the details are different: the name, the place, the disease, the toxic waste.
But the outline is the same: they were victims because they were poor. Their families needed a land to live on, and they didn’t know the extent of the pollution. The children were born sick because they were poor, and they were not being treated because they had no money for medical treatment.
I love my boy more than I love any other child. But I believe that all children deserve an equal shot at a happy, healthy life. These children should be helped, not ignored and left to fend for themselves, or to die of a wasting disease, treated as if they do not deserve to live.
Filed under: opinion
