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| Sunday, 2 June 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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National scale action plan
She is slight in stature, and has a tiny, perfect face surrounded by a halo of raven curls. Hers are casual words, falling at random, like droplets of water, which belies her will and determination that seeps between the words; urge calling or concrete action NOW. "I feel like a little shepherd looking after sheep," Dr. Ajantha Perera says thoughtfully. "Our people are like little sheep, walking about with no particular direction. Somebody has to bring them together. Then, when that somebody is gone, our children can take the cause further. I am moved to do this campaign not by the knowledge I have acquired, but by the vision I feel inside." Dr. Perera wants to stir up a national-scale action plan to reduce the emission of black vehicle fumes which deaden and poison the air we breathe. She is at the helm initiating a campaign to advocate proper maintenance of vehicles as the simplest means of ridding our air of cancerous black smoke. But all her commitment is not for the sake of the heavy realms she has trodden to become the environmental scientist she is - with a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Munich and post-doctoral training at the University of Tennessee. It is for the sake of a little boy. Her own little boy of eleven years. Born in Germany, but since his arrival in Sri Lanka in 1992, has been gradually failing in health. "In Colombo, so many school children suffer from the wheeze and my son is one of them," she says softly. Heavy attacks of the wheeze is usually countered by the drug Ventolin which in turn, can affect one's nervous system and heart beat. So, is not it simpler to take precautions against developing a wheeze? "One evening my son was scheduled to sing "Bhatiya and Santush" at his school Talent Show and he got a severe wheezing attack in the morning," Dr. Perera said. "All the while he kept on crying, Amma, I want to sing at the show, and I had to take him to Navaloka to nebulise him." The nebuliser relieves the patient by letting him inhale Ventolin through the mouth. "Then I had to repeatedly give him hot water to drink. Finally, he made it to the show and sang very well. But, I wouldn't like to see any other mother going through the same agony." Dr. Perera points out that there has been an increase of wheezing and lung cancer among local school children for the last few years. "Our Health Department can support my statement. This incidence is due to the high concentration of carbon particles our children breathe in through vehicle fumes in our environment." Surely, kicking up sedate Sri Lankans in toto preventive action could not be too arduous for this gutsy environmentalist who, in the early nineties, formulated the country's first National Project for Recycling Solid Waste and introduced the term "Prathichakreekaranaya" (recycling) to the Sinhala masses. |
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