Water borne diseases kill 200 kids every year
New Kashmir Challenge
Mehboob Jeelani (Rising Kashmir)
Srinagar: After 20 years of violence, Kashmir has identified its new enemy – the water borne diseases that are alarmingly proving to be fatal, particularly among the children.
Talking to Rising Kashmir, Head of Government Medical College’s (GMC) Preventive Medicine department, Dr Muneer Masoodi said: “Water borne diseases are the only fatal diseases in the Valley. We often get cases of jaundice and gastroenteritis due to consumption of unsafe drinking water.”
Masoodi said waterborne diseases could only be controlled by taking precautionary measures and supplying safe drinking water.
“We can only treat these diseases. The best way to be on the safer side is to consume water after boiling it for 15 to 20 minutes,” he said. “Hepatitis-A is one of the dangerous diseases transmitted through contaminated drinking water. The symptoms are only acute (no chronic stage to the virus) and include fatigue, fever, abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, itching, jaundice and depression. “These diseases cannot be controlled until people take precautionary measures and Public Health Engineering department provides safe drinking water.”
A doctor of GMC’s SPM department, wishing not to be named, said that in Kashmir province two to four people die due to waterborne diseases a week. This takes the annual death toll due to water borne diseases to over 200.
“Children are the worst hit as their immune system finds it difficult to overcome this disease. Contaminated drinking water used in the preparation of food also becomes source of food-borne disease through consumption of pathogenic microorganisms,” he said. “The consumption of non-treated drinking water initially causes abdominal discomfort, fatigue, weight loss, diarrhea, bloating, and fever.”
According to World Health Organization, diarrhea disease accounts for an estimated 4.1 per cent of the total DAILY global burden of disease and is responsible for the deaths of 1.8 million people every year.
It was estimated that 88 per cent of that burden is attributable to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene and is mostly intense among children in developing countries.