Mystery in the Fields, a three-part series, explores how a rare form of kidney disease is killing laborers and crippling communities in three different regions, from Central America to Sri Lanka to India. As death tolls mount, researchers remain puzzled, unable to definitively uncover the disease’s causes.
The series is an outgrowth of an earlier investigation, “Island of the Widows,” published last December in the Center for Public Integrity and its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In that piece, reporter Sasha Chavkin exposed how chronic kidney disease was so prevalent in some regions of Central America it left communities filled with widows and scientists searching for answers.
Building from that research, Chavkin discovered that the disease had also developed in clusters in India and Sri Lanka. Over several months this year, he and video journalist Anna Barry-Jester traveled to the countries to tell the story from the ground, and pressed governments and leaders of the medical community for answers.
Their report is also being published or aired in news outlets including PRI’s The World, the BBC, The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka and The Week in India.
Project staff
Reporter: Sasha Chavkin
Photographer/videographer: Anna Barry-Jester
Web team: Christine Montgomery, Paul Williams, Sarah Whitmire
Fact-checking: Peter Newbatt Smith
Project Editor: Ronnie Greene