This is about further development taking place in Izarapara, the
arsenic-affected village we visited earlier.

IDE Bangladesh came forward with 10 Shapla Filters for arsenic removal. Last
week Prof. F. Islam and Mr Saad of IDE Dhaka Office visited the village
installing the filters and have discussed their functioning with the villagers.
Our heart-felt thanks to IDE and to Prof Islam & Mr Saad. The villagers
expressed their gratitude through our student who formed a Local Arsenic
Mitigation Group there. Dr Alauddin of Wagner college (New York) will monitor
arsenic content.

The fact is that the villagers are too poor to afford bare minimum for survival,
they cannot buy any vitamin/protein rich food/medicines for treatment of
arsenicosis. We suggested some local fruits/vegetables which are comparatively
cheap.

We would like to keep the Local Group active and are thinking of providing them
with supply of some vitamins/medicines, we have already collected a small fund
for this.Of course this is a temporary step. We wonder if any pharmaceutical
company or others can provide some of their products as donation or on a soft
loan, so that the Local Group can start a marketing system on a subsidized
basis. Already one of our group members has suggested this idea. We are
creating other Local Groups in other affected villages, so we can scale up this
system to provide remediation to the affected people and employ village youth on
a sustainable basis.

We request inputs from all our friends.

Prof M I Zuberi, Rajshahi University