Posted on 05/31/2015 10:17:42 AM PDT by Lorianne
New Delhi __ FOR weeks the breathing of my 8-year-old son, Bram, had become more labored, his medicinal inhaler increasingly vital. And then, one terrifying night nine months after we moved to this megacity, Bram’s inhaler stopped working and his gasping became panicked.
My wife called a friend, who recommended a private hospital miles away. I carried Bram to the car while my wife brought his older brother. India’s traffic is among the world’s most chaotic, and New Delhi’s streets are crammed with trucks at night, when road signs become largely ornamental. We undertook one of the most frightening journeys of our lives, with my wife in the back seat cradling Bram’s head.
When we arrived, doctors infused him with steroids (and refused to provide further treatment until a $1,000 charge on my credit card went through). A week later, Bram was able to return home.
When I became a South Asia correspondent for The New York Times three years ago, my wife and I were both excited and prepared for difficulties — insistent beggars, endemic dengue and summertime temperatures that reach 120 degrees. But we had little inkling just how dangerous this city would be for our boys.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I just watched a program about the water problem in India.
Horrible stuff going on. the reporter was talking to a relief worker and she said the biggest problem in India is “open defecation”. Hundreds of millions of people simply do not use toilets, even when they have them, the just go wherever they may be. Imagine over 400 million people taking a dump wherever they may be, and then multiply that by 100 years. the stench alone. no wonder you want to hold your breath in India.
Gardiner Harris is a friggin’ idiot for staying and Delhi because he is choosing his career over his son’s health! Get him out of there and come back home!
The guy takes his family to a third world country and doesn’t take extra inhalers for his son,as a back-up?
Poor excuse for a parent.
India is also the world capital of bad food sanitation. Go heavy on the antibiotics if traveling there (although you can buy them cheap with no prescription, quality control is a problem).
Public urination is like the national sport, just after cricket.
The burning of trash is the biggest problem for air quality there, in my opinion, although there are a few big problems. In a lot of areas of the third world, similar practices are used (Cairo slums, Kabul, Kathmandu, etc.), but the density of people in India is extreme.
Trash is often just just loosely heaped for a few weeks, being picked over by dogs and cows, even pigs; until someone throws a match on it. Dried cow patties are commonly used as fuel to cook dinner or make tea; so an early evening smokescreen gets thrown up.
As the standard of living continues to rise, sanitation services will become more affordable to municipalities, but there is a pressing need for a National education campaign to change the cultural attitudes toward sanitation - trash disposal, hand washing, sewage, etc. It really is exceptionally bad there.
You choose to live in a third world country, you’re going to be living in a third world country.
I have not spent any time I Delhi, but have been in Chennai for several weeks which was bad enough.
I used to live in a 1st world country but in the past 20 years it has become a 2nd world country and is in a spiral to a 3rd world rapidly. Thank you Ted Kennedy and the DemocRatic Party.
obviously not an 'investigative' reporter!
Good grief. You have children - Number ONE reason not to take them to India in the first place.
You have a child with breathing problems: number TWO.
After you already lived there and know the circumstances, you MOVE YOUR KID TO THE MIDDLE OF THE WORST AIR!
Idiot.
And your wife is no better. At the least, when you moved them to the city - she should've been on a plane back stateside.
Well...he works for the NYT.
“Get him out of there and come back home!”
So, so agree. His wife at least should bring the kids back to America. I, myself, would not put up with it.
“the density of people in India is extreme.”
Yes, it is mindboggling. What are they, the 3rd or 4th most populous country? But they are much smaller than other big countries.
Hmmm, have the flies, mosquitos, gnats, etc. been surpressed in smoky areas or have the little beasts adapted?
Somebody could get a grant tostudy that.
India is the dirtiest, most filthy country in the world. In all my travels, nothing even comes close.
Landing in Mumbai and picked up by private car, you see nothing by gray. Grays trees, gray homes(cardboard shanties),
gray streaks of water used for cooking and urination, air so
bad that every morning I tied a clean T-shirt around my face and soaked it with bottled water. Pollution 10 times worse
than China. Birds fall from the ski dead!
Climbing up the Nats to higher elevations, like in Pune, The air gets a little better, like LA twenty years ago
on a hot summer day.
You live on bottled water. Always bought at your hotel because there is a huge market for refilling empties with
local water and selling them on the street. Even from
the hotel, you always check the seals.
I’ve been in a lot of countries, drank the water and eaten
off of street cars. Gotten sick, recovered and never gotten
sick again in the same places. India? no way!!
Last trip I took the express train from Agra to New Delhi ti catch a flight home and made a very stupid mistake. I ordered a drink. And yes, the ice cubes were contaminated. I spent four days in Zurich until I felt good enough to get on a plane for the states.
My Doc took stool samples and called me later to tell me that the lab couldn’t even begin to identify three types
of bacteria that now lived in my gut....
No more trips. The internet is a life saver!
400,000 people? Try over a billion!
Sorry, that should read 400 million..
Yup. Ya gotta watch those ice cubes.
Upon arriving in New Delhi, we were ordered NOT to take Immodium for diarrhea as it just suppressed the symptoms. You had to let it run its course or the bugs would eat through your colon and perforate it. A red letter day for anyone was when one had a solid BM. The biggest fear was after every meal or before a plane flight. If you went 4 hours after a meal without a symptom, you were good until the next meal.
Lots of French there on vacation. I couldn’t imagine actually paying my own money to go to that sewer. Even having everything paid for and being paid to be there, I didn’t want to go.
India makes third world countries look good by comparison.
That Seinfeld episode nailed it. The place smells like death.
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