This is potentially a significant public health crisis. The provincial government has recognised that there are real risks and earlier in the year, constituted a committee with a membership made up of officials from the health department, local government and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board. As is so often the case, once a committee has been set up, it meets a few times and then trails away into torpor. The most likely way for the victim to have ingested the amoeba is via piped water. He either drank or washed in the water that eventually killed him. The local government is at the very least culpable here. It has failed to procure the requisite number of chlorine tablets or formulate any plan for their distribution around the 18 towns within the city that need them. At best, this is careless, at worst, willfuly negligent. The water supply and distribution system in Karachi is old, inefficient and underfunded. It would probably cost billions to bring it up to an acceptable modern standard — which is not going to happen any time soon. Chlorination, urgently, may prevent further deaths, and we urge the administration to do that with all speed.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 16th, 2014.
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