"I wanted to jump out of the plane because the headache was so unbearable," said Champa Devi Shukla, who still suffers unbearable pain after inhaling toxic fumes in the world's largest industrial disaster in India 20 years ago.
"The painkillers and sleeping tablets helped me make the flight here," said the 52-year-old Shukla, recalling her long journey from the central Indian city of Bhopal, where she leads a campaign to seek justice for survivors of the gas leak from a pesticide factory on December 3, 1984 that killed more than 14,000 people.
Shukla and Rashida Bee, 48, another survivor and co-leader of the campaign, came to the United States to receive an award on Monday from the American Public Health Association to mark the 20th anniversary of the disaster.
After each received a plaque from the largest US organisation of public health professionals, the two physically frail and diminutive women vowed to continue their fight against American giant Dow Chemical, the current owner of Union Carbide, which ran the ill-fated Bhopal plant.
"In the 20 years that have passed, there has not been a single day when the victims have slept without taking medicine to soothe pain," said Bee, who lost five members of her family to cancer after exposure to the poisonous gases.
"Despite all the medicine, their health keeps falling," she lamented. "It may be just a slow, painful death," she said through an interpreter, as tears welled in her and Shukla's eyes.
The duo have "lit a fire" and catapulted the issue onto the global stage, said the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, a global coalition of non-profit groups and individuals seeking justice for the survivors.
"I have worked in the field of occupational and environmental medicine for over 25 years and this is clearly one of the worst tragedies," Barry Levy, a physician specialist, told AFP at the award ceremony.
"Not only do we need to recognise this, but we also need to recognise the tragedies that go on in smaller numbers day in and day out throughout the world through chemical exposures," he said.
At least 1,750 people died instantly when tonnes of toxic gas leaked from the plant in Bhopal on the night of the disaster. Another 2,500 died within a week. Victims' groups say at least 10,000 more have since died.
After a protracted legal battle, Union Carbide paid 470 million dollars to the Indian government in a settlement reached in 1989. India's Supreme Court last month approved a plan that will see 15.67 billion rupees (343.5 million dollars) in compensation distributed to 572,173 survivors.
"In total, the victims may have received an average of between 800 and 1,000 dollars after 20 years of suffering. While this is surely welcome as temporary relief, the suffering will continue," Bee said.
