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In search of safe water

Khalid Md. Bahauddin
PEOPLE need clean water and sanitation to maintain their health. Water also sustains ecological systems and provides an input into the production systems that maintain livelihoods. Water security is an integral part of a broader conception of human security.
In broad terms, water security means ensuring that every person has access to enough safe water to lead a healthy life, while maintaining the ecological systems that provide water and also depend on water.
When water security is absent, people suffer from poor health and the disruption of livelihoods. Some 2.6 billion people -- half the developing world's population -- do not have access to basic sanitation, and underreporting means that these figures understate the problem. "Not having access" to water and sanitation is a polite euphemism for a form of deprivation that threatens life, destroys opportunity and undermines human dignity.
Deprivation of water and sanitation has many bad effects. Some of those arc
• Some 1.8 million child deaths each year are a result of diarrhoea -- 4,900 deaths everyday. or an under-five population equal to that of London and New York combined. Deaths from diarrhoea in 2004 were some six times greater than the average annual deaths in armed conflicts for the 1990s. Together, unclean water and poor sanitation are the second biggest killers of children.
• The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
• Close to half of oil people in ’ developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
• Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water.
• Water insecurity inflicts millions of people with illness, and lost educational opportunities in childhood leading to poverty in adulthood.
At the beginning of the "Water for Life" decade, 1.1 billion people did not have access to clean drinking water, 84% of who lived in rural areas. 2.6 billion people, more than 40% of the world population, do not use a toilet.
In 2004, more than three out of every five rural people did not have access to basic sanitation facility. If the current trend persists, nearly 1.7 billion rural dwellers will still not have access to improved sanitation by2015.
Bangladesh has a population of about 144 million, of whom 40% are under the poverty line An estimate puts the total population at 181 million by 2025, with 41% living in the urban areas -- nearly half of them will be poor and without services.
In Bangladesh, up to 40% of overall morbidity is due to water and sanitation related disease in some communities, in the year 2000, 12.1% DALYS were lost due to diarrhoeal diseases, and 90% of these were attributable to environmental causes of which 65% could be averted through improvement in water
supply, sanitation (latrines, drainage, rubbish disposal) and hygiene awareness. Diarrhoeal diseases, due to water pollution, lack of hygiene, and poor sanitation account for 11% of total deaths in Bangladesh.
The most alarming fact is that hygiene-related diseases costs the country, Tk. 500 crore per year for treatment alone. According to the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authorities, the groundwater table -- the source of drinking water for one-third of this city's 10 million people --has become contaminated with harmful bacteria.
Bangladesh is grappling with the largest mass poisoning of a population in history because groundwater used for drinking has been contaminated with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. It is estimated chat of the 125 million inhabitants of Bangladesh between 35 million and 77 million arc at risk of drinking contaminated water.
Arsenic in groundwater poses a great challenge to the water supply in the country. Since its detection in 1993, various organisations have been screening tube wells for arsenic contamination The most contaminated areas lie in the districts of Chandpur, Comilla,
Noakhali, Munshiganj, Faridpur, Madaripur, Gopalganj, Shariatpur and Satkhira.
Excessive levels have also been found in other regions. Arsenic-contaminated drinking water is a public health emergency. Exposure to arsenic from drinking water increases the risk of skin, lung and bladder cancer.
WHO has predicted that in most of the southern part of Bangladesh almost 1 in every 10 adult deaths in the next decade will be a result of cancer triggered by arsenic poisoning. From the experience of Taiwan it has been forecasted that almost two million of people are at risk of developing cancer in the coming decades.
Each day of continued exposure increases the risk of morbidity and death. Unlike other major health problems experienced in Bangladesh, arsenic caused diseases can be eradicated at relatively low cost.
Safe water and sanitation are basic necessities, so we must ensure their availability, not only for the present but also for the future.
Khalid Md Bahauddin is Member, Bangladesh society of Environmental Scientists, Jahangimagar University, and Member, LIFE - a UN associated NGO