At least 22 people, including 15 children, have died in a tribal village in Orissa during the last 10 months.

Several others are facing health disorders.

The deaths occurred in Sundura village in the northern Keonjhar district, about 300 km from here, which is home to about 100 families of the Bhuyan and Munda tribes, Oriya daily Sambad reported Saturday.

While a majority of children died of malnutrition, dysentery and diarrhoea, seven elders died due to other health disorders, the paper said.

The people in this village can barely make ends meet. They are landless and live way below the poverty line. They are incapable of providing nutritious food to their family members because of their precarious financial condition, it said.

When they are sick, they fall back on the local witch doctor and never go to the government hospital for treatment. Most of the deaths occurred due to lack of health awareness among the villagers, the newspaper said, quoting health worker Basanti Sethi.

--Indo-Asian News Service