Poor sanitation poses serious health risks, say experts

Inadequate investment in sanitation projects and an atmosphere of general insecurity have made controlling illnesses much more difficult, say health workers. Since last summer, experts have warned that deficiencies in local sewage systems, together with the bad quality of drinking water, could result in an outbreak of water-borne diseases. “We’ve observed a 30 percent increase in cases of waterborne diseases, especially cholera,” said Dr Muhammad Khalid, a paediatrician at the Children’s Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. Khalid added that, since last December, at least one child a day in the capital had contracted some form of water-borne disease, noting that some 90 percent of these cases were registered in the city’s outskirts, where sanitation facilities are relatively poor. “Urgent improvement to sanitation facilities and regular rubbish collection are desperately needed in these areas,” Khalid said. Government officials, meanwhile, say they are hampered in their efforts to curb the trend by major funding shortfalls. “We’re trying to repair the system with a very small budget, which isn’t enough to cover the Baghdad suburbs, where the situation is desperate,” said Omar Rubaie, a senior official at the Ministry of Municipality and Works. “Most funds are spent on security issues rather than on sanitation.” Rubaie went on to note that the number of engineers working on infrastructure projects had fallen as a result of insurgent violence. “Many projects have been stopped for security reasons, which has only aggravated the sewage problem,” he said. “Millions of dollars are required, but less than 20 percent of this has been provided by the government.” According to Dr Abdul Jalil, director of the Infectious Diseases Control Centre, the last cholera outbreak – in August 2003, when 187 cases were reported in the southern city of Basra – was due to poor sewage and bad water treatment. “We warned the government about this last year,” said Jalil. “But there have been no changes, which has caused concern among health workers that a cholera outbreak could happen anytime.” According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cholera is an acute diarrhoea disease caused by the bacterium vibrio cholerae. A person can be infected with the illness by consuming contaminated water or food. Common sources of infection are raw or poorly cooked seafood, raw fruit and vegetables or other foodstuffs that have been contaminated during preparation or storage. Cholera can be fatal if not treated properly. In an attempt to stem rising rates of infection, the WHO is currently working in partnership with the health ministry to distribute water-purification tablets and launch prevention drives in the capital. AS/AR/AM