SRI LANKA: Pesticides Kill More People Than Civil War

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Dec 4 1997 (IPS) - Its true. More Sri Lankans commit suicide each year than are killed in the bloody ethnic conflict that has dragged on for 14 years.

While the rising death toll in the civil war, some 50,000 civilians and combatants since 1983, dominates media headlines here, fewer people know that suicide due to acute depression is a much bigger killer.

An alarming 106,000 people are believed to have taken their own lives during this period, and most of them by consuming pesticides, researchers say.

“Depression and pesticides access — these are the problems we are facing,” observes psychiatrist Ranil Abeyasinghe, a leading member of a high-powered committee that was set up by the government earlier this year to prescribe solutions.

Abeyasinghe says pesticides is the favoured choice, because it is easily available and is lethal when taken in large quantities.

Last year, there were 7,344 suicide deaths island-wide, which is a high 40.8 per 100,000 people in a country with a population of 18 million. In Britain, the suicide death rate is 11 per 100,000.

In comparison, homicides in Sri Lanka in 1996 accounted for 9.8 per 100,000 and accidents — the number one killer in most countries — 8.6 per 100,000.

The most common causes of suicides apart from depression are alcoholism and general and family-related stress — not broken love affairs, poverty and unemployment as is generally believed.

“These are public misconceptions,” says Abeyasinghe, who has worked for more than 10 years on the subject of suicide. “We find that in most suicides related to failed love affairs there are family problems too.”

He argues that poverty is also not a cause, because if it were the working class and the middle class would not be the most affected in Sri Lanka. “If the poor are affected, why isn’t suicide a serious phenomena in Bangladesh or other poor countries?” he asks.

Neither is joblessness a reason: when unemployment rates were at a high between 1973 and 1997 — as Sri Lanka’s economy struggled through a policy of import controls and subsidised food — the suicide rates were low. But when employment levels rose in 1981-1982, suicides were also up.

While suicide is a common problem across the country, more people from remote and rural areas die than compared to those who attempt suicide in urban areas where victims have access to better medical care.

“Victims from rural areas — where small hospitals are unable to save patients who have consumed pesticides — must be rushed to urban hospitals. Most often they die on the way,” Abeyasinghe said.

Studies have shown that most suicides occur just after the sowing season, when farmers need pesticides the most. Easy access to pesticides is the problem. In Sri Lanka, these chemicals can be bought over the counter.

The presidential committee, government sources say, is looking at how other countries have tackled the problem. Finland, for instance, sells pesticides only to farmers and gardeners, after it was found its easy availability was the reason for the high suicide rate.

“If we restrict access to pesticides, the suicide rate will come down by 30 percent,” Abeyasinghe asserts. He also believes that better psychiatric care, improved medical facilities in rural areas, better education and recognition of depression as a clinical illness by the medical fraternity would also help.

“It is unfortunate that general practitioners don’t recognise depression as an illness. No one wants to admit it is a common problem faced by everyone and that it should be treated, not hidden,” he adds.

Women and the elderly are the most vulnerable. At least 12 percent of suicides are by those above 60 years, either because they are unable to cope with a recurring illness or due to general frustration.

Work-related stress is a common reason for depression among men, while violence at home, both sexual and physical, make women and girls suicidal.

Researchers say that many Sri Lankan women seek employment abroad, mostly in the Middle East as domestic servants, as a form

of marital separation. “They just can’t cope with household and family stress, mainly arising out of harassment by the spouse. Since divorce is difficult and shameful in rural societies, they find a way out by working abroad,” a sociologist explains.

But the separation affects families in all kinds of ways, particularly daughters, who are often then sexually abused by drunken fathers. “Most girls can’t cope and find suicide the only way out,” he adds.

Psychiatrists also blame the media, who “creates explosive situations in trying to dramatise suicides. Sensational headlines don’t help. Research has shown that media stories have helped increase the suicide rate,” Abeyasinghe says.

The committee has identified the reasons. Now it has to come up with a strategy to tame the insidious killer stalking the country.