Everyone is at risk, but kids have it worst

Children in the federal capital and surrounding areas might be at greater risk of falling prey to waterborne diseases than adults.

“Although the impact of waterborne diseases on children and adults is about equal since the mode of infection is the same, kids have a greater likelihood of contracting these diseases because their immunity levels are lower,” said Dr Shahzad Munir, head of paediatrics at Polyclinic Hospital in Islamabad.

Almost 57% of all children admitted to the Polyclinic paediatrics department in August suffered from waterborne diseases such as acute gastroenteritis, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.

Another reason for the high number of children affected by waterborne diseases is simply that children form a huge chunk of the population, the paediatrician said.

Exactly 35% of Pakistan’s population is below age-15, according to 2012 estimates by the Population Reference Bureau, an international organisation that collects population data. The world average is 26%.

“Poor personal hygiene and a lack of proper sanitation facilities contribute to the spread of waterborne diseases,” the doctor said, but the main culprit is contaminated water.

“Islamabad is more than fifty years old now and some of its water supply lines are in desperate need of repairs,” Dr Munir said. He said the sewerage lines sometimes come in contact with water supply lines and contaminate them which can only be combated through regular maintenance of the lines.

The issue has been plaguing Islamabad since years now. As late as August this year, Islamabad was losing almost 20 million gallons of water in a day, according to official sources. Former Capital Development Authority (CDA) chairman Farkhand Iqbal was unable to take concrete steps during his short tenure to address the issue.

Tahir Shahbaz, the new chairman, also seems to have realised the importance of the issue. The authority on Friday announced a fresh plan to tackle the city’s ailing water pipelines. The authority plans to bring down water wastage from 50% to 15%, in line with “what is acceptable for a municipality,” according to CDA spokesperson Ramzan Sajid.

Then there are the suburbs.

“If you move some 20 kilometres away from Islamabad toward the suburbs, people don’t even get tap water,” said Dr Munir. “They use boring or water from wells, and that water might not be fit for drinking.”

The doctor said the CDA should put up certificates of water quality at its filtration plants and people should make sure the certificates have not expired before they use water from those plants.

Statistics on waterborne diseases in Islamabad are difficult to find and where they are available, it’s equally problematic to vouch for their accuracy. At Polyclinic’s paediatrics department, Dr Munir said he had just started data collection after taking charge a couple of months ago.

At the children hospital at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), data about waterborne diseases is being recorded in the isolation ward, but that data is apparently not being compiled and stored in the computer department. The computer department was only able to provide statistics on diarrhoea, and no statistics were available on gastroenteritis, typhoid and hepatitis A.

From June to August 2012, the children’s hospital received a combined total of 1,571 diarrhoea patients at its Diarrhoea Training Unit and the Accidents and Emergency centre.

Diarrheal diseases are more prevalent in the summers because of increased water consumption according to Dr Munir, but diarrhoea patients at the PIMS children hospital’s emergency centre account for only 3.5% of its total admissions from June to August.

Diarrhoea is not to be taken lightly. According to the findings of the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2006-07, diarrhoea was responsible for 10.8% of deaths among under-five children in Pakistan.

Dr Munir suggested a three-pronged strategy to fight waterborne diseases – proper maintenance of water lines in the city, campaigns should be run to raise awareness about personal hygiene and people should not compromise on the vaccinations of their children.

“Typhoid and Hepatitis A are fully preventable with vaccinations,” Dr Munir said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd,  2012.