Dirty water supply spreads diarrhoea

A child admitted with diarrhoea cries in discomfort and pain as his mother (not seen in picture) tries to soothe it at ICDDR,B in the city. Over 500 children suffering from diarrhoea were admitted to the hospital yesterday.Photo: STAR

Every day more than 700 diarrhoea patients from different parts of the capital flock for treatment at ICDDR,B as the government is yet to take effective measures for clean water supply. About half of the patients are infants and children.
The hospital sources said the number of patients is shockingly higher than that of last March because the diarrhoea broke out early (end of February) this year, which usually happens from early April.
The patients are mostly coming from Mir Hazaribagh, Siddique bazar, Mirpur, Khilgaon, Sabujbagh, Shyampur and Rayerbazar, the hospital sources added.
Nasima Begum, a resident of Mir Hazaribagh brought her five-month-old daughter at the hospital yesterday afternoon.
She claimed that though they drink water from tube well, her daughter got sick two days ago. She rushed her to the hospital, as her daughter's condition turned serious last morning.
Habib, a patient from Siddique Bazar, got admitted to ICDDR, B two days ago. They drink WASA supplied water at home, he said.
Display board of ICDDR, B yesterday showed that a total of 704 patients got admitted at the hospital on Sunday, 721 on Monday, 705 on Tuesday and 716 on Wednesday. The number of patients had already mounted to 365 till 2:00pm yesterday.
" Crisis of pure drinking water is the main reason for the diarrhoea out break," said the duty doctor of ICDDR, B yesterday. The number of patients may escalate to a frightening stage this year, he added.
The Water and Sanitation Authorities (WASA) sources said the water pollution has reached such a level that it has become almost impossible to purify it. Besides, supply water is getting contaminated through the pipeline leakages due to lack of WASA maintenance.
Every day WASA supplies more than 22 crore litres of water to Dhaka households, which is only 15 per cent of total water demand in the capital. All this water comes from the stinky pitch-black water of the Shitalakkhya and Buriganga.
Last year, Institute of Water Modelling (IWM) conducted a survey for World Bank that found factories operating in Gazipur, Tongi, Tejgaon, Tarabo, Ghorashal and Narayanganj were polluting the rivers around the city by dumping effluents. The factories mostly include the chemical processing units, textile, plastic and dyeing units, steel rolling, fertilizer and paper mills.