Now that summer is upon us, our streets will soon fill up with vendors selling different liquid refreshments. The problem is that most of these refreshments use water of questionable provenance. Contaminated water carries all sorts of ‘bugs’ that can cause serious intestinal problems. And as it happens almost every year we will have outbreaks of gastroenteritis (gastro for short) filling up hospital beds and even causing some fatalities. For most adults this might not be too much of a problem except for discomfort and the loss of a few working days but for children it can be serious.

As temperatures go up, in front of almost every school there will be vendors selling ‘attractive’ stuff like cold juices, ice lollies, ice cream and other such goodies to the children waiting to be picked up by their parents. Most of these ‘goodies’ are sources of intestinal problems. Many might suggest that drinking freshly squeezed orange juice or sugar cane juice should be fine but sadly it is not just the juice but rather the utensils that these drinks are served in that are a problem. The glasses are ‘washed’ in water that is quite suspect. Often it is just a pail of water next to the vendor in which these glasses are rinsed and then reused.

Added to the risk of contaminated water is the state of personal hygiene of the vendor. The water the glasses are washed in might not be too bad but the next problem is the hands of the person washing these glasses. Where the hands have been is a serious matter. I don’t want to expound further on this problem since most of my readers understand what I am talking about.

In almost all restaurants in the America that I have eaten in, when you visit the ‘toilet’ there is a sign saying that all employees must wash their hands after using the facilities. So, how many of our food preparers and servers in the roadside eating places or even in our high priced restaurants do that?

To emphasise this last point, a close acquaintance recently developed typhoid fever. Clearly, he did not become infected in his home since nobody else in his family developed such a problem. He does travel a lot for work so he often eats ‘out’ but he definitely does not eat at roadside food joints; so one must presume that he became infected through the mechanism of unwashed hands of a food preparer or kitchen help in one of the upscale eateries that he does frequents.

Of course, typhoid can be prevented by appropriate vaccination and recommended ‘booster’ shots. The importance of booster shots cannot be emphasised enough. Many of us as children received immunisation but in time outgrew the immunity provided by these vaccinations. Recently in the United States, there has been a resurgence of Whooping Cough (Pertussis) among adults who were vaccinated as children and never received booster shots. The question of immunisation and the importance of booster shots, however, is a story for another day.

Many serious diseases are transmitted by contaminated water. An incomplete list includes hepatitis A, bacterial and viral ‘gastros’, typhoid, cholera, and parasitic infestations. In the world today, availability of clean drinking water is a major problem and in most of the poor countries contaminated drinking water is the cause of a large number of deaths and disability. My focus today is, however, much narrower.

The readers of this column most likely have access to clean drinking water in their homes and many of them have been immunised against some of the diseases mentioned above. More importantly, most of them also have access to medical care when they or members of their family get sick. So it is not the general issue of clean drinking water that I want to discuss but rather the problem of school and even college students that consume ‘goodies’ from roadside vendors.

A lifetime ago when I was in school and then in college, for me much of the stuff offered by roadside vendors was indeed irresistible. The same was true for my siblings. All of us often talk of how we enjoyed the ‘kulfis’, the ‘chaats’ especially those from ‘Bano Bazaar’, the milkshakes, the freshly ‘expressed’ sugar cane juice, and other such favourites. And yes we survived all that stuff. The fact that both of my parents were doctors probably helped a bit.

Parents have enough trouble trying to control what their children are up to, so what children nosh on while they wait to be picked up after school is not a priority for most of them. But it should be! There are two slightly divergent points of view about this. Avoiding all sorts of bad ‘stuff’ as a child makes us excessively vulnerable to the same stuff as adults. On the other hand most parents just want to get children into adulthood and then what happens to them becomes their problem.

It is indeed difficult to convince children to avoid ‘cold’ refreshments during the summer heat and many will partake of these and get sick. Can this be prevented? I suppose it is difficult but parents should at least impress upon their children that they must avoid certain types of food and snacks that are ‘water based’ especially things like ‘sherbets’, ‘ice golas’ (packed ice balls drenched in coloured syrups), ice cream, ‘kulfis’ and other such stuff. As far as fresh juices are concerned, children should be given small bottles of water to drink from when they are in school and to use it if they actually want to drink any of these juices after school.

The important point, however, is that when we send our children to school we also assume that the schools will provide them with a safe environment. This obviously includes snacks and drinks that are hygienic and healthy to consume during school hours. What happens outside a school is probably not under their control, but it should be. School administrations in collaboration with local police and civic authorities should make sure that ‘street vendors’ are not allowed to set up shop within a specified distance of the school exit points.

Of course not all children get picked up at the school exits. Some walk home or walk to some collection point where they can take public transportation so it might be difficult to prevent them from coming across street vendors along the way. Here perhaps the ‘civil’ authorities could play a part. In general as far as I can see, street vendors are entirely unregulated and unchecked. Many perhaps just ‘pay off’ local police so that they can continue to ply their trades. Considering the overall lack of ‘oversight’ in the food industry, it is unlikely that street vendors and roadside eateries can ever be monitored effectively.

The fact that new schools are opening up in almost every neighbourhood makes such policing of roadside vendors virtually impossible. So then, I suppose, like other forms of ‘security’, food security for our children must also become the responsibility of the families and the individuals involved. As the old adage goes, better be safe than sorry.