%0 Journal Article
%T Health: Cognition and Threshold among the Oraon Tea Garden Labourers of Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal
%A Subrata K. Roy
%A Sujata Kar Chakraborty
%A Arupendra Mozumdar
%J Journal of Anthropology
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/987584
%X There is scarcity of health information in many subpopulations in India, which needs to be explored for formulating effective public health policy. Studies on the tea garden population revealed that poor socioeconomic conditions, ignorance due to illiteracy, culture and food habit, overcrowding, and unhygienic living conditions make the population vulnerable to various communicable and noncommunicable diseases and malnutrition. Data were collected from the labourers of Birpara and Dalgaon tea gardens of Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal. The objective was to identify the primary health care available vis-¨¤-vis the health problems. The results were based on mortality data, subjective well-being, frequency of ailment symptoms, perceived health status, and selected health practices as well as some observations, which indicate their cognition and threshold regarding health problems, presented as case studies. Mortality rates were high in the population; comparative mortality data shows no considerable change in mortality rate over time and space. A very high frequency of anaemia was prevalent among females along with sore throat and abdominal pain. Perceived health status of most of the people was good, although that was not always true, because the perception of the people often depends on their threshold and cognition about health and disease. 1. Introduction It is well known that the tea is an important agroindustry of West Bengal and Assam in Eastern India, which holds a considerable potential for the economic development, as it earns substantial foreign exchange and provides employment to a large number of unskilled labourers in India [1]. Tea industry opened up new occupations and exercised a considerable influence on the socioeconomic life of the people. It has been revealed from many studies that poor socioeconomic conditions, ignorance due to illiteracy, overcrowding, and unhygienic living conditions in the residential colonies make tea garden population vulnerable to various communicable diseases and malnutrition. Scattered reports indicate higher prevalence of undernutrition and infectious conditions like filariasis in this population [2¨C6]. A recent study showed that NCDs (noncommunicable diseases) like hypertension is emerging as an important public health problem among them, which may be partly due to the excessive use of alcohol and tobacco [7]. There are also other health problems, which are related to their occupation. Roy [8] reported that though the individuals of the tea gardens feel ill (sometimes they do not feel ill despite having the
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2013/987584/