Aftermath of Bhopal Disaster-An Epidemiological and Socio-Medical Survey

Aftermath of Bhopal Disaster An Epidemiological and Socio-Medical Survey THE Bhopal disaster has been an unprecedented occupational and environmental accident. Equally unprecedented have been the imperatives for relief, rehabilitation and research in the aftermath of the disaster. The Medico Friend Circle, a group of doctors and non-doctors interested in health, undertook an epidemiological and medico- social investigation with the primary purpose of supporting the disaster victims, citizens' groups and voluntary agencies in their struggle for meaningful relief and rehabilitation and for reliable information about the disaster. The report of the investigation was released by the MFC last month. Some MFC members had visited Bhopal in mid-February and had identified certain areas for urgent action. Later the team for the epidemiological study was in Bhopal from March 15 to 25. It comprised a voluntary group of clinicians and doctors working in community health projects as well as health activists from different parts of the country. The MFC expresses the hope that the report of its investigation, titled 'The Bhopal Disaster Aftermath" will help to highlight that (i) what people say and feel is as important evidence as what can be discovered through an over-mystified medical- technological approach; (ii) in the absence of a community-oriented epidemiological perspective, decisionmaking about relief efforts following a disaster can be ad hoc and often irrelevant; and (iii) for research to be relevant to the lives of the people, the findings and inferences drawn must be communicated to the providers of health service and the patients themsleves through an effective communication strategy.