Dying for the loo

11/06/2009Safe drinking water is at a premium in Bangladesh. BMS development workers Fiona and Les Allan look at the health problems associated with water shortages – and how their local hospital is helping.

As we wait for the monsoon rains, water levels have become very low. Ponds are dry, river levels have fallen and the water table has dropped.

Fresh water
Throughout Bangladesh there is a scarcity of water, let alone safe drinking water. We have heard that, in an adjoining district, water is being sold at 120 taka (a day labourer's wage) per bucket and in Dhaka there are long queues for water at mobile tankers.

In Chittagong, houses only get water pumped to them twice a week and, if there are power cuts that day, you cannot pump the water up into the storage tanks on the roof.

Problems like these have led to the hospital being full to overflowing with patients who have diarrhoea, vomiting, typhoid fever or hepatitis.

In the future, climate change will cause Bangladesh to increasingly swing between periods of drought and flooding.

Fresh water will become even scarcer as the rising sea levels turn ‘sweet water’ into salty water.

The great stink
This may seem a far cry from the situation in the UK where we take a plentiful supply of safe water and good sanitation for granted.

Yet, only 150 years ago, it was a very different story. In 1858, London experienced “the great stink” when the smell of untreated sewage in the Thames was so bad that the windows in Parliament had to be sealed. It’s reported that 30,000 people died from cholera in London between 1848 and 1866.

Arguably, one of the greatest ever contributions to public health came when Dr John Snow and Rev Henry Whitehead persuaded the authorities that cholera was spread in contaminated water leading to the creation of London's sewage system and the eradication of cholera.

For stunning images of what modern London would be like without adequate sanitation facilities, click here.

Low-cost care
Back to Bangladesh in 2009 and the Christian Hospital Chandraghona’s community health programme (CHP) is working hard to address issues of safe drinking water and sanitation. Village health workers, mobile clinics and the hospital provide low-cost medical care for those who are sick.

However, prevention is better than cure and the CHP is enabling the poorest of the poor to access sanitary latrines and deep tube wells.

Materials to make the latrines are provided by the CHP, which are made and installed by the villagers themselves giving them a sense of ownership and pride.

The village health workers educate the families on personal hygiene, how to keep the latrines clean and how to treat diarrhoea quickly using commercial or homemade oral rehydration supplements. This project is supported by British Baptists via Operation Agri.

Photos from top:
A queue for water
Flooding
Making concrete rings
A new tube well in Nuton Para

Please pray for:

•   those affected by water shortages and disease
•   the expansion of CHP’s water and sanitation project into more villages
•   those working to prevent and prepare for the effects of climate change in Bangladesh.

Utilities

You can support mission workers like Fiona and Les Allan by clicking here.

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