Poverty and Jiggers

A group of youth has been involved in supporting people with jiggers in Iganga district and with a group of researchers. We have been out on two weekends and trying to understand the problem. Of course if you do not talk about it, the problem will only grow. Yes it is embarrassing that this problem prevails today in many parts of the rural Iganga district. I guess it is true for many other parts of the country, Jiggers is a major problem. We have been collecting funds to aid the victims if you want to call them that. However, simply treating them is not the solution. The problem is much wider. To establish what the problem is, we interviewed various people including the local leadership in these places, the victims themselves, the people in the villages and these came up as the causes of the problems.

1)      Poor hygiene. This includes cleanliness, people live in filthy conditions and kind of accept them, poor sanitation, about 40% have toilets, living with animals in the same house

2)      Attitudes. It was reported that many people didn’t care what happened to their lives, they were able to live with jiggers and not ashamed.

3)      Poverty. Poor people who didn’t even have money to buy a safety pin to remove a jigger. They cannot have cement floors in their houses, live with their animals in their houses, cannot afford to go to health facilities.

4)      Alcoholism. Most of the adults who have jiggers spend most of their time on alcohol. Interestingly it was said you do not need money to drink. You can get free alcohol from friends.

5)      Uncontrolled presence of pigs.

6)      Failure of leadership. Leaders do not do anything in terms of mobilizing and sensitizing people. However the leaders attribute this to lack of government support.

7)      Absence of health facilities. The health Centre on average is 8kms away and not easily accessible besides there are no doctors there.

8)      Lack of government support. Even the health workers say they are not facilitated.

We are continuing to look at the different dimension of this problem. Definitely attitude, poverty and lack of government support are key cases of the problems.  Unfortunately everybody expects government support and yet this is an issue that deals with an individual who is poorly motivated and government has given an enabling environment to able to work, earn an income and change their lives. This problem is not only with people with jiggers. It is a national problem, youth, veterans, and all vulnerable people expect government to give them handouts. What is surprising that even the rich business men expect government to give them subsidies. This is going to be a major problem solving the country’s economic problems.