HEALTH IMPACT CAUSED BY POOR WATER AND SANITATION IN DISTRICT ABBOTTABAD
Abstract
Background: Large proportions of people still do not have excess to safe drinking water and propersanitation. Methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to assess the health impacts.Random households were selected. Information was collected from questionnaire through interviewschedule method, group discussion and observation checklist. Results: People rated water and sanitationcondition in urban as: 10% very good, 27% good, 20% bad, 43% very bad, and none of them said wedon’t know. While in rural areas they rated 10% very good, 36% good, 44% bad, 6% very bad, and 4%of them said we don’t know. Water sources in selected urban and rural areas were different, 37% inurban and 68% in rural area depended on bore wells as water source, 22% depended on hand pumps. Inurban areas, the disease ratio was typhoid 20%, hepatitis 13%, diarrhoea 27%, skin infection 23%,stomach problems 53% and allergies 33%. In rural areas, after stomach problems, diarrhoea, hepatitisand typhoid ratio was very high as compared to urban area. In rural community, 70% were unaware ofpoor water and sanitation consequences on health. Conclusion: The water and sanitation condition inurban as well as in rural community is poor but in rural community it is even worse. The drinking waterwas contaminated with E. coli, Enterobacter, Salmonella and Clostridium. This observation wascorrelated with prevalence of many water born diseases especially in rural communities of Abbottabad.Keywords: Safe drinking water, health impacts, environmental awareness, water borne diseases, waterand sanitation.References
Murray C, Lopez A. Global mortality, disability, and the
Contribution of risk factors: Global burden of disease study.
Lancet 1997;349:1436–42.
Hutton G, Haller L, Bartram J. Economic and health effects of
increasing coverage of low cost household drinking-water supply
and sanitation interventions to countries off-track to meet MDG
target 10. Public Health and the Environment. World Health
Organization Geneva. 2007.
World Bank 2002b Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at a Glance.
Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Fact Sheet. The World
Bank, Washington, DC.
Ustun AP, Bos R, Gore F, Bartram J. Safer water, better health
cost benefits and sustainability of interventions to protect and
promote health. World Health Organization. 2008.
Bennet EB. Public-private Cooperation in the Delivery of Urban
Infrastructure Services (Water and Waste), Yale-United Nations
Development Program-Public Private Partnerships (UNDP-PPP).
UNICEF & WHO 2004 Meeting the MDG Drinking Water and
Sanitation Target: A Mid-Term Assessment of Progress.
UNICEF/WHO, Geneva, Switzerland.
WHO & UNICEF 2000 Global Water Supply and Sanitation
Assessment 2000 Report. World Health Organization (WHO)
and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New York.
Pokhrel D, Viraraghavan T. Diarrhoeal diseases in Nepal vis-à-
vis water supply and sanitation status. J Water Health
;2(2):71–81.
Khan FJ, Javed Y. Delivering Access to Safe Drinking Water and
Adequate Sanitation in Pakistan Working Paper Series 2007:30.
Retrieved 2009, from http://www.pide.org.pk/pdf/ Working
Paper/WorkingPaper-30.pdf
Government of Pakistan. Ten years perspective development
plan (2001–2011), planning division, government of Pakistan.
World Bank. Report of second structural adjustment credit
program. International development association program and
Government of North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. 2002
Ford TE. Microbiological safety of drinking water: United States
and global perspectives, Environmental Health Perspectives
;107(S1):191–206.
Karn SK, Harada H. Field survey on water supply, sanitation and
associated health impacts in urban poor communities –a case
from Mumbai City, India. Wat Sci Technol 2002;46(11–
:269–75.
Montgomery MA, Elimelech M. Water and sanitation in
developing countries: including health in the equation. Environ
Sci Technol. 2007 1;41(1):17–24.
World Bank. Water Resources Management. A World Bank
Policy Paper. Washington, DC: The World Bank;1993
Published
Issue
Section
License
Journal of Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad is an OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL which means that all content is FREELY available without charge to all users whether registered with the journal or not. The work published by J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad is licensed and distributed under the creative commons License CC BY ND Attribution-NoDerivs. Material printed in this journal is OPEN to access, and are FREE for use in academic and research work with proper citation. J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad accepts only original material for publication with the understanding that except for abstracts, no part of the data has been published or will be submitted for publication elsewhere before appearing in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. The Editorial Board of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad makes every effort to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of material printed in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. However, conclusions and statements expressed are views of the authors and do not reflect the opinion/policy of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad or the Editorial Board.
USERS are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
AUTHORS retain the rights of free downloading/unlimited e-print of full text and sharing/disseminating the article without any restriction, by any means including twitter, scholarly collaboration networks such as ResearchGate, Academia.eu, and social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and any other professional or academic networking site.
