SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACT OF ARSENICOSIS ON RURAL COMMUNITIES OF BANGLADESH

摘要

Arsenic contamination of ground water is a serious health hazard in Bangladesh. Its pollution is not only causing serious health problem to the people, but also it has been affecting the environment by creating enormous social problems in the community. It generates multifarious socio-cultural problems for the arsenic victims and their kin members in the rural areas of the country. The victims and their families virtually become fully isolated from the community, and nobody wants to keep any good contact with them. The villagers do not want to make any matrimonial alliances with these families. Their children are the victims of direct avoidance of their classmates. They are often ignored by their teachers wlio indirectly discourage them to come in public. It has also been reported that the rural people refuse to accept food prepared by an arsenic patient. Because of illiteracy, many people confuse skin lesions with leprosy, which they believe is totally incurable and also contagious. Under this situation, this paper attempts to explain how arsenicosis creates impediments in terms of their economic activities and how their children and family members are struggling with this adverse situation as they debarred form social we have evidences where it creates a kind of disintegration in the village life, which requires immediate intervention from social reformists point of view. And accordingly, the paper give evidences from an anthropologists perspective and thus provide suggestions in context to remedial procedure by rendering them proper assistance and knowledge about it.