Deeper Perspective - Fatal Chronic Kidney Disease in India
Chronic Kidney Disease of non-Traditional causes (CKDnT) is a deadly epidemic
decimating the world’s agricultural workers and their families. Affecting nearly 70% of
the population in some communities, this disease has claimed at least 20,000 lives in
Nicaragua and El Salvador since the start of the millennium. During the past three
years, I have worked with Tom Laffay and the La Isla Foundation, an international research and policy NGO, to document CKDnT among sugarcane workers in both of these countries.
In January 2016, Tom and I traveled to India with the objective to continue our investigative journalism by documenting the CKDnT epidemic in India and the current global research effort being organized by La Isla Foundation and its partners that is coalescing there to address it. Numerous testimonies from workers, doctors, researchers and policy makers confirmed that this is indeed a serious threat to public health, and a global issue. In addition to still photographs, we are creating a short 15-minute film that will be offered to the NGOs involved to use in their own advocacy work. Additionally, our independent reporting contributed to an article in the April edition of Science Magazine, working to broaden the scope of understanding and attention on the CKDnT epidemic globally.
Although India’s incidence of CKDnT appears to be lower than the Central American
countries, which span close to 700 miles of the Pacific coast, the affected areas in India
are extremely concentrated. In the hardest hit village we visited, Akkupalli, unpublished
results from a Harvard Medical School study found that 37% of the population had
CKDnT. Along India’s eastern coast, near the northern border of the Andhra Pradesh
state, a 100-mile stretch of communities has suffered for over 20 years from what is
known as ‘Uddanam Nephropathy.’ In villages like Gonaputtuga in the fertile Uddanam
area of Srikakulam district, CKDnT sufferers mirror their counterparts in Central
America: young farmers with little or no formal education, doing strenuous manual labor,
drinking potentially contaminated groundwater, and lacking easy access to medical
care. Here, many of those who are ill spend their lives climbing coconut trees to harvest
the fruit.
Through this project, the goal is to be a part of positive change, using the compelling
power of photography and video to generate awareness, education, support, and
community involvement and to focus more attention on a frequently under-reported and
overlooked issue. Capturing moments of hope and despair, work and play, joy and sorrow, birth and death, my photographs and videos intend to intimately illustrate the multigenerational impact of CKDnT, bringing the plight of agrarian communities and the workers’ lives into worldview, giving them a voice, and making this crisis resonate on a personal level.