Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [142]
Some groups now estimate that the gas from the beautiful plant killed as many as between sixteen and thirty thousand people.
More than half a million Bhopalis suffered from the effects of the toxic cloud, in other words, three in every four inhabitants of the city. * After the eyes and lungs, the organs most affected were the brain, muscles, joints, liver, kidneys and the reproductive, nervous and immune systems. Many of the victims sank into such a state of exhaustion that movement became impossible. Many suffered from cramps, unbearable itching or repeated migraines. In the bustees, women could not light their chulas to cook food without risk of the smoke setting off pulmonary hemorrhaging. Two weeks after the accident, a jaundice epidemic struck thousands of survivors who had lost their immune system defenses. In many instances neurological attacks caused convulsions, paralysis and sometimes coma and death.
More difficult to assess, but just as severe, were the psychological consequences. In the months that followed the disaster, a new symptom made its appearance. The doctors called it “compensatory neurosis.” A number of Bhopalis developed imaginary illnesses, but some neuroses were very real. The most serious psychological effect was ghabrahat, a panic syndrome that plunged patients into a state of uncontrollable anxiety with an accelerated heartbeat, sweating and shaking. Those suffering from it lived in a permanent nightmare state. People with a tendency toward vertigo suddenly saw themselves on the edge of a precipice; those who were frightened of water thought they were drowning. With its associated depression, impotence and anorexia, ghabrahat brought desolation to a large number of survivors, sometimes making them view the catastrophe as a divine punishment, or as a curse inflicted on them by some member of their family. Ghabrahat drove many to despair and suicide.
Today Bhopal has some one hundred and fifty thousand people chronically affected by the tragedy, which still kills ten to fifteen patients a month. Breathing difficulties, persistent coughs, ulcerations of the cornea, early-onset cataracts, anorexia, recurrent fevers, burning of the skin, weakness and depression are still manifesting themselves, not to mention constant outbreaks of cancer and tuberculosis. Chronic gynecological disorders such as the absence of menstrual periods or, alternatively, an increase to four or five times a month, are common. Finally, retarded growth has been noted in young people aged between fourteen and eighteen, who look scarcely ten. Because Carbide never revealed the exact composition of the toxic cloud, to this day medical authorities have been unable to come up with an effective course of treatment. Thus far, all treatments have produced only temporary relief. Often overuse of steroids, antibiotics and anxiolytics serves only to exacerbate the damage done by the gases. Today Bhopal has as many hospital beds as a large American city. Without enough qualified doctors and technicians to use and repair the ultramodern equipment, however, the vast hospitals built since the disaster remain largely unused. An inquiry carried out in July 2000 revealed that a quarter of the medicines dispensed by the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust, recently established with Carbide funds, were either harmful or ineffective, and that 7.6 percent were both harmful and ineffective.
So much official negligence has produced a rush of private medical practices. According to victims’ advocacy groups, however, two-thirds of these doctors lack the necessary skills. In light of this, several of these groups set up their own care centers such as the Sambhavna Clinic, with which the authors of this book are now associated. This unique institution, founded by a former engineer (see the Letter to the Reader) by the name of Satinath Sarangi, is staffed by four doctors and some twenty medical