220 kilometres from Jharkhand's capital Ranchi, in Garhwa's Pratapur village, 55-year-old Ram Patiya Devi's family feels she is dying. They feel she will soon be the 37th, in a list of deaths in the village in the last decade, due to skeletal fluorosis, a disease caused by excessive fluoride in ground water that accumulates in bones and weakens them considerably.
Doctors say there is no cure for the disease and that purifying the water is the only way out.