FMC India, an agricultural sciences company, concluded a safety awareness program for the farming community in Akola district on using agrochemicals in a safe and judicious manner, in partnership with the agriculture department of the government of Maharashtra. The program educated doctors in the district to recognise symptoms of agrochemical poisoning and treat chemical exposed patients effectively.
The safety awareness program covered 7,500 farmers and eighty doctors. The program saw participation from senior Maharashtra government officials, the district health officer, and Dr. Jay Shah from the FMC Poison Control Centre. The workshop was aimed at preparing the medical community in rural Maharashtra, which has experienced a steady stream of reports of exposure cases in recent years. This was done by teaching local physicians the fundamentals of treating accidental pesticide exposure.
The press release stated that FMC India started the awareness program in 2020 and this year, the workshop was attended by more than seventy-five doctors operating across Akola, including the district agriculture officer and the district health officer with their respective teams.
Ravi Annavarapu, President, FMC India commented, “FMC India has always demonstrated a strong commitment to the well-being of India’s farming community. Through this safety awareness program, we want to improve farmers’ awareness and knowledge of using agrochemicals in a safe manner, while preventing accidental poisoning. Every year, FMC provides more than a million farmers in India with training on the responsible and safe use of pesticides. We believed it was appropriate to provide local physicians with the same training in order to assist them in detecting and treating any cases of pesticide exposure. We will steadily scale up the program to reach the wider farming community in the state”.
