By Matṧeliso Phulane
The ministry of tourism, environment and culture (MTEC) aims to eradicate the use of mercury. The exposure to mercury is considered to be harmful and lead to serious health problems.
In an interview with theReporter this week, the director of environment in the MTEC, Motsamai Stanely Damane indicated that they aim to spread the information in the whole country, for people to gain enough knowledge about dangers of mercury, as well as to eradicate products which contains it.
He highlighted that, their goal is to reach out the people all around the country through media and public campaigns. Their main targets are pregnant women, nursing mothers, traditional doctors, herd boys as well and some the factory companies in the country which manufactures energy saving fluorescent lamps, thus exposing mercury to the workers.
“The research undertaken shows that, mercury has side effects such as, damaging kidneys, livers and heart. Apart from that, it results to cancer, affecting the central nervous system, hearing as well as sight. Therefore,a person may end up with amnesia,” he observed.
In addition, Damane noted that Lesotho is among other 137 countries in partnership with Minamata Convention whose objective is to protect human health and the environment against the anthropogenic emissions and release of mercury and its compounds.
According to the research done in Lesotho, mercury is mostly used by traditional doctors to heal, strengthens them and eliminate evil spirits. Besides that, they believe that it helps pregnant mothers to speed up delivery. However, it is not scientifically proven that it has to be taken orally.
“Traditional doctors seem to insist on the use of mercury, claiming that it solidifies them. To pregnant mothers and nursing mother; it can completely damage the unborn child’s brain, memory behaviour, ability to learn and lead to miscarriage,” Damane commented.
He claimed that unusual behaviour that children show nowadays, including temper and committing suicide may be the result of mental health problems due to mercury.
Historically, Damane explained that according to research done in 1956, dangers of mercury began to be recognised in Japan, Minamata city, where people used to eat lot of fish and shell fish which therefore resulted into methyl mercury poisoning.
“Studies showed that those people were eating fish in excess amount and it accumulated in their bodies, causing some sicknesses. Sadly, some of them are still deformed badly, that is how the world stood against it to ensure that it is completely restricted,” he argued
Besides that, people misused it in such a way that they made bleaching products out of it, dental fillings, batteries, fluorescent lighting and paints.
Damane said in 2018, Lesotho also carried on its research to establish the sources of the substance, saying that some cultural beliefs about the matter contributed to its use.
He further indicated that they had to find ways to strategies and implement how they will tackle the issue. However, since Basotho are just consumers they are still waiting for those countries decisions to totally restrict the supply and let them know which products will replace mercury.
He said in a few years back they still held the same campaigns on various media platforms such as Lesotho Television (LTV) and radio stations to create awareness; but there was lack of funds to continue the campaign.
He said fortunately this year, the Minamata project funding came to their rescue for them to carry out assessments and other related activities regarding the use of the dangerous.
Damane said they do not have exact statistics about the number of people affected by mercury, hence now they are still deciding on their action plan for the project; which will also include sampling and testing.
He concluded that they are ready now to implement the project with the hope to change Basotho’s mentalities on use of mercury. Again there are going to be some laws which are to be enacted to discourage and ban the use of the matter. enforce laws and regulations for the people who uses mercury.
During the campaign that was held on Friday last week, the ministry of health (MoH) deputy principal secretary, ‘Matṧoanelo Monyobi, highlighted that the establishment of the Minamata Convention is in line with her ministry’s mandate.
She said the convention must be implemented effectively to minimize the risks posed to communities in all regions by the toxic threat of mercury poisoning, as anyone exposed to some mercury can be subjected to long term and sometimes permanent neurological damages.
“As a country, we are more than committed to protect our people against the potential health risks posed by mercury exposure and impact on health. The ministry of health affirms its commitment to play it role thereof,” she noted.
In an interview with the traditional doctor, Malefetsane Liau, he argued that they use mercury for various traditional purposes such as dispelling evil spirits and solidify themselves.
Liau could not understand why the MTEC is on its way to ban the use of mercury while it is essential for their traditional purposes. Apart from that, he said traditional doctors were not consulted when the decision to pave way for prohibiting use of the substance was reached.
“They do not have rights to restrict the use of mercury even though they claim it being harmful. We have licenses in case anything wrong happens to our patients,” he said.
Liau considered such decision unfair to them as traditional doctors, hence in mining companies, mercury is still used to clean gold. Therefore, he believed, that will persuade him to have mercury in large quantities for future use, if they decide to restrict people from using it.
Liau said they deserve to know the harmful effects of mercury and urged the MTEC not to ban its use rather suggesting that such use be highly regulated.
