Children most at risk from Hyderabad's contaminated water

Children are said to be most at risk from contaminated water being consumed by residents of the city of Hyderabad in the southern province of Sindh, with many dying painful, almost instantaneous deaths, according to a health official. The official said about 27 people, most of them children, are reported to have died after poisonous water from a polluted lake was allowed to enter the mainly rural region's water supply in early May. More than 2,000 others have been treated for gastroenteritis and chronic diarrhoea. "Three more children died yesterday. It's very regrettable that we're seeing these little children die like this," Dr. Salma Bozdar of the Sindh health services department told IRIN from Hyderabad. Bozdar, a reproductive health specialist, said lower immunity in infants and slightly older children prevented them from recovering from diarrhoea as quickly as adults might, leading to a higher mortality rate. "Little children don't take any time to die. They go very quickly. If an older person gets diarrhoea, they take time to go. But these children are mostly already malnourished so, in a few hours or a day or so, they just die," she maintained. The crisis has prompted the United Nations to form a disaster management team to work out an assistance plan to combat the problem. Teams from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) visited the area and took samples of the lake's water and from water supply plants so that the "nature and prevalence of microbiological and bacterial contamination" could be ascertained, according to a UN spokesman. "WHO sent their experts for five days. They found that a chlorinating plant had been out of order for more than two months - more than that, in fact - and all the people were receiving unchlorinated water all that time," Bozdar said. The authorities had reportedly ordered more clean water to be released in an attempt to cleanse the region's water supply, the health official added. "They've released more water. That will dilute the poisonous water. Actually, the water from the lake should not have been released. I don't know how it was done, but apparently it's also been done before," Bozdar maintained. Once the UN team's investigations are complete, it will offer a detailed technical review of the causes, effect and remedies for the problem, including proposals for long-term remedial measures as well as advice on how to build the capacity of water treatment plants and sewerage systems.