A citizen-scientist dialogue in Girandurukotte on CKDu

Friday, 20 September 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Villagers engaging with the group discussion

A villager presents the findings and observations

Ginnoruwa, a village located around six kilometres from Girandurukotte Town, is severely suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease uncertain etiology (CKDu). A group of Ginnoruwa villagers participated in a dialogue-type program at the Mahaweli Development Centre in Girandurukotte on 10 September with representatives from the scientific community who are researching and studying the causes and prevention of CKDu.

Representing the scientific community, Dr. Rohana Dayaratne, a consultant physician at Monaragala District General Hospital, and Saranga Fonseka, research officer at Medical Research Institute, Sri Lanka Scientific Service, participated in the discussion.

In 2015, ‘Rain Drops Project’ was implemented in Ginnoruwa as a concept of the agriculturalist, late Ranjit Mulleriyawa, with the financial assistance from the CSR program of the Commercial Bank, Sri Lanka. Under the project, around 100 families were facilitated with 5,000 litres capacity of rainwater tanks to collect rainwater during the rainy season and utilise it during the dry season as a preventive measure for CKDu.

As part of his PhD research on CKDu and drinking water, Upul Wickramsinghe, PhD candidate at the Department of Anthropology, Durham University, UK, under the supervision of Dr. Tom Widger, implemented a citizen science project of water testing with a selected group of villagers. Over a period of one year, through several workshops and individual consultations, the village group was trained on testing their own water sources with the use of portable water meters and they have developed a database on water quality, which they presented at the discussion.

Although there has been ample research conducted on this lethal kidney disease for more than two decades, by reputed local and international institutions, rarely are the ordinary citizens, who are direct victims of the disease, actively involved with the research and their voices truly heard. The 10 September discussion could be the first of such that give an equal space for those villagers compared to the scientific community.

According to the anthropologist Upul Wickramsinghe, in effective combating and preventing of CKDu, it is essential to incorporate people’s experiential knowledge with policy making and implementation processes and for that matter, there should be more and more of these types of discussions.