Editorial
Homing in on diarrhoea
Reach potable water to the affected
Polluted water is giving rise to a public health emergency that should make all concerned roll up their sleeves and act. Combined with drying out of water sources and poor sanitary conditions, contaminated water in extensive city areas is triggering an outbreak of diarrhoeal diseases of a rather dreadful proportion. Empirically, all previous data seem to have been surpassed with a monthly average of some 11,000 requiring and receiving treatment at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR'B), Mohakhali .
Citing laboratory findings ICDDR'B experts reportedly maintain that 40 percent of patients are suffering from cholera, adding that they are from lower socio-economic stratum. The implication seems to be that this is attributable to poor hygienic conditions, apart from the intake of polluted water. With 80 percent of water samples from a locality said to be containing cholera bacteria, this we believe, is a good ground for a follow-up survey designed to determine the extent of water-borne hazard facing the city.
There is nothing to be panicky about the situation because we have the know-how and the tool to deal with a public health crisis. What we do in the short run is what matters now. But look at the irony of asking people to boil water to drink when we are in the midst of a gas crisis. But if an early alert had been heeded to a predicted short-fall in 2010 and gas extracted from the reserve in good time we would not be in this predicament, according to knowledgeable circles.
However, distribution of water purification tablets is one option, besides reaching pure water through lorries to affected areas. We believe commandeering the services of the army to ferry water to the people is a typical crisis management response given a security concern over pump houses in a situation of acute scarcity. But this is not a durable solution, to be sure. What the decision makers need to do is to expeditiously set up the planned water treatment plants to use more of surface water including harvested excess rain water along with freeing the rivers of pollution and drawing water from it. It is time we reduce our critical dependence on ground water, levels of which are falling dangerously.
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