Aarti Kelkar Khambete

Come monsoons and vector borne diseases start making headlines every year in many parts of India, especially mosquito borne diseases like dengue, malaria, chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis.

What are vector borne diseases

While the monsoons are eagerly awaited in the country, India's health system remains stretched while struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a time when vector borne diseases could become rampant, and neglect of preventive measures could lead to a spike in these diseases, warn experts!

Water fleas are small crustaceans widely found in varied aquatic habitats. They are very sensitive to changes in the water quality of water bodies such as rivers and streams that they inhabit.

Anand Jagtap, ex Officer on Special Duty (OSD) at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the winner of the Lingaraja Memorial Award and a PhD scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai has been associated with the Slum Sanitation Programme (SSP) undertaken by MCGM with support from the World Bank since 1997 to 2005.

Deane De Menezes is the founder of Red is the New Green (RING) – an award winning social enterprise working towards reducing the social stigma attached to menstruation.

Slums, fast growing Covid-19 hotspots!

The ‘Managing Aquifer Recharge and Sustaining Groundwater Use through Village-level Intervention’ (MARVI) project is being undertaken since February 2012 with the overall aim to improve the security of irrigation water supplies and enhance livelihood opportunities for rural communities in India.

Citizens Association for Child Rights (CACR) works with municipal schools in Mumbai with a focus on WASH and menstrual hygiene management and even a digital literacy programme.

Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008, is a mission driven social enterprise which designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc worldwide and India continues to be in the line of fire. While cases continue to rise, India is also experiencing a crisis of another kind, that of the lockdown affecting the livelihoods of a large number of workers from the informal sector.