South Asia
Water deaths: Over 75 people, mostly children, have died after drinking polluted water in the past one-and-a-half months in Pakistan's Sindh province. Another 6,600 have been admitted to various hospitals, media reports said.
"The entire summer is ahead but local municipal authorities have not taken any steps. Contaminated water is continuously supplied,' Ghulam Mustafa Talpur, an activist with the Pakistan branch of international non-governmental organisation (NGO) Actionaid, was quoted as saying. A recent water quality study by Aga Khan University, Karachi, also revealed that old and decaying underground sewage and water pipes had ruptured in many places and the drinking water supplied was being contaminated with sewage. Sindh's health department says over 8,300 cases of water-borne disease have been reported in the province in May 2005, with more than 2,700 in Hyderabad district alone.
Just a few days ago, Hyderabad residents had expressed concern about the decision of irrigation authorities to release contaminated water from the Manchhar lake into the Indus river. 40 people were killed in 2004 due to water-borne diseases triggered by a similar move (see Down To Earth,
Related Content
- Empowering women for effective climate change adaptation: the role of the private sector
- South Asia macro poverty outlook 2024: country-by-country analysis and projections for the developing world
- Addressing the impact of climate change on women farmers’ health in South Asia
- Urgency of heatwave risk management
- Comparative study of carbon rights in the context of jurisdictional REDD+: case studies from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean
- Fossil fuel subsidies and GHG emissions: firm-level empirical evidence from developing Asia