Contaminated water

That people in Pakistan are vulnerable to water-borne diseases is not surprising. Time and again it has been reported that lack of sanitation efforts have contaminated our water streams. Recently, water samples collected from different parts of Hyderabad found that the water in the city is infected with dangerous viruses, such as the one that resulted in the recent outbreak of the drug-resistant (XDR) typhoid.

Since 2016, around 8,000 cases of the XDR typhoid have been reported with 69 per cent of cases in Karachi and 27 per cent in Hyderabad alone, according to the Pakistan Medical Association. With people in Hyderabad already on alert because of XDR, in the sewage water samples tested were also found the presence of poliovirus — a virus Pakistan has been struggling to eradicate.

But despite the alarming situation and with experts cautioning against the outbreak of various diseases, the district officers of Hyderabad’s Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) and the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) provincial government have not taken stock of the situation. Even during a recent emergency meeting convened by the Health Department that aimed to raise concerns over the prevalence of the poliovirus and initiating an anti-polio drive, officials of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and WASA only provided lip service. While they spoke of the measures taken towards fixing the broken sewage and drainage system, the ground realities present a different picture.

The issue of contaminated water is not just limited to Hyderabad or cities in Sindh. Pakistan ranks at number 80 among 122 nations on the quality of drinking water, making water pollution one of the major threats to public health in the country. The provincial and federal governments should work together towards ensuring that something as basic as the provision of clean drinking water is provided to the citizens.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2019.

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