Dirty drinking water

Let there be no misunderstanding: waterborne disease is a killer both globally and nationally. It is caused by pathogenic microorganisms which are typically transmitted via what is believed to be ‘fresh’ water. Any activity that involves the use of freshwater can be a vector — washing, bathing, food preparation and the consumption of infected food being the most common. The World Health Organisation has estimated that the daily burden of disease caused by waterborne illness accounts for 4.1 per cent, with 1.8 million deaths annually. Around 88 per cent of that burden is directly attributable to unsafe water supplies, poor sanitation and poor personal hygiene. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan has a problem in this regard. The report issued by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) tells us that nearly 75 per cent of drinking water resources in the country are contaminated and unfit for human use.

This is a truly horrifying statistic. The PCRWR tested water in 24 cities. It was looking for ways in which to identify the gaps in supplying potable water and stumbled on a disaster. Out of 360 sources tested, only 90 — 25 per cent — were found to be safe; the rest were unfit for human consumption. Analysis of the samples revealed bacteriological contamination, ‘hardness’, arsenical suspensions, iron and other dissolved solids. Sindh was by far the worst case — 96 per cent of all the samples were found to be unsafe. There was not a single safe source in Karachi, Hyderabad or Sukkur. In Punjab, 63 per cent were unsafe, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), 90 per cent and Balochistan 85 per cent. This is indeed a public health crisis. Around 40 per cent of the diseases suffered by the population are waterborne. This is no less an emergency than the many other emergencies faced by Pakistan, and is not going to be quickly solved. The majority of the population has little choice and has to use ‘raw’ untreated water. At the very least a national public awareness campaign is the need of the hour. We await developments with interest but little real hope.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  17^th,  2015.

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