Simple safe-water system is cutting diarrheal disease in developing countries

06 March 2003

By Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — For a few cents each month, families in poor countries are purifying drinking water by using diluted bleach and germ-resistant jugs as part of a program that is cutting in half the deadly cases of waterborne diarrheal diseases, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.
It is a low-tech approach that proponents say can pay for itself and even boost villages' economies. The pilot program has proved effective enough that the United States and a group of charities will seek to expand it to 20 developing countries. That announcement is planned for an international water meeting in Japan this month.
The key is empowering some of the 1.1 billion people who drink water tainted by sewage, natural bacteria, and parasites to protect themselves against some of those threats.
"You can provide people with a means to treat their own drinking water," said Dr. Eric Mintz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It works in the real world."
Dirty water's chief bane is diarrhea, from cholera, E. coli bacteria, and other bugs. Diarrheal diseases are a particular threat to young children, killing 2.2 million of them each year, says Population Services International, a nonprofit group working with CDC and UNICEF to expand the safe-water system.
Although boiling water kills bacteria, it does not kill many parasites, and firewood can be scarce and expensive. Nor does that stop family members from reinfecting the household water bucket with dirty hands or cups, a problem the CDC discovered during a major cholera epidemic in Latin America.
It will take decades for governments to build reliable water-treatment systems and pipe clean water in developing nations. The CDC, working with the World Health Organization, set out to find a simple, affordable way for families to purify their own water in the meantime.
Small amounts of chlorine — far more diluted than laundry bleach — are a staple of modern water treatment. The CDC first experimented with generators that let remote villages brew their own chlorine from salt. Then scientists began working with bleach makers in different countries to produce bottles of the special, diluted version.
The CDC also helped jug makers design germ-resistant versions, similar to what U.S. campers frequently use. They are big enough to hold a day's supply, with fill holes small enough to block hands and a spigot at the bottom.
People just need to add one capful of disinfectant to each water-filled jug and wait 20 minutes. A bottle of disinfectant, enough to last an average family a month, sells for 15 cents to 30 cents, Mintz said. That is enough to cover production costs and bring a few pennies profit to the producers and village kiosks that sell the products, he said.
Pilot testing in such countries as Zambia, Kenya, and India show the chlorine-and-safe-storage system can cut the rate of diarrheal disease in half, Mintz said. The system is in use in 15 developing countries.

Water Forum Failed to Ensure Water for Peace

GENEVA, Switzerland, April 1, 2003 (ENS) - Green Cross International, a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, has expressed its disappointment at the final outcome of the Ministerial Conference held in parallel to the 3rd World Water Forum in Japan late last month. "The Ministerial Declaration agreed to in Kyoto on the 23rd March is a weak document, with few identifiable new commitments or proposed mechanisms for translating already stated goals into action," the organization says.

Participants at the 3rd World Water Forum were instructed to provide the Ministerial Conference with clear recommendations. During the Forum, the major regional and thematic sessions identified dozens of recommendations for action, commitment, policy change and financing - but the Ministerial Declaration failed to take these recommendations into account. Other environmental organizations were also critical of the Ministerial Declaration. The IUCN-World Conservation Union says the ministers produced a "watered down" document and called for direct input from the thematic sessions into the declaration. WWF, the conservation organization, condemned governments at the World Water Forum for their failure to commit to a sustainable approach to ensure adequate water supply and sanitation. "The public has been badly served by their governments at this forum, who have adopted a ministerial declaration that is a backward step from previous commitments," said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's Living Waters Programme. "We have to ask how credible a forum like this is when governments do not draw on the 12,000 water specialists gathered together to identify common sense solutions to water problems, but instead continue to promote massive infrastructure as the sole solution to the world's water crisis." One omission in particular will affect millions of people, fisheries, wildlife and water sources, WWF wanrs. This was the failure by governments to commit to review dam development projects.

The most frustrating omission for Green Cross was their set of recommendations on the theme of water for peace, particularly since the 3rd World Water Forum was held from March 16 through the 23, the week when the U.S. led war on Iraq began on March 20. Green Cross International and UNESCO shared the task of coordinating the theme of water for peace, based on years of work and research in the field of water conflict prevention and resolution. At the Forum, experts on the subject of transboundary waters, and representatives from government, the private sector and civil society with practical experience in managing shared water resources and associated conflicts held two days of discussions and presented what Green Cross calls a "concise and realistic set of recommendations" to the ministers. But the ministers did not mention the peaceful sharing of the world's water resources, or protection of water sources and infrastructure during times of war in their Declaration, only a very vague commitment to "encourage states to promote such cooperation" in transboundary basins. Mikhail Gorbachev, president of Green Cross International, presented the water for peace recommendations to the Forum. They include:

· Immediate ratification of the UN Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses by all states, as a first step towards the negotiation of a Global Water Convention.

· Funding mechanisms to support activities related to internationally shared water bodies.

· International support for the creation of a Water Cooperation Facility, to work with basin authorities, governments and other stakeholders to resolve intractable water disputes.

· Measures to ensure respect for the right of stakeholders to take decisions regarding water resources in transboundary basins.

· Community responsibility for and ownership of cooperation processes, backed by international solidarity and commitment to an alternative form of development which respects cultural diversity and environmental sustainability.

None of these recommendations are included in the Ministerial Declaration. Despite the events in Iraq during the week, the strongest recommendation of the water for peace theme, and others at the Forum, to take immediate action to protect water infrastructure during times of armed conflict and from terrorist attack, was also overlooked.

UNPRECEDENTED PROTEST IN LAOS AGAINST NAM MANG 3 DAM

Some 40 Hmong men organized a protest in Laos against the Nam Mang 3 Hydropower Project in November 2002, reveals a report released today by
IRN. It was the first time that a villager-led protest against a dam has been recorded in Laos.
On November 22, the demonstrators marched to the dam site armed with sticks and guns, threatened Chinese construction workers and demanded that they leave the site. The villagers were infuriated that they might be evicted for the project and yet had received no information about where they would
be relocated, when they would be moved, or what compensation they would receive. The protest triggered a 5-day halt to construction.
Susanne Wong, IRN's Southeast Asia Campaigner, says: "Nam Mang 3 is the latest example of the ongoing problems with hydropower projects in Laos.
The same problems with transparency and accountability have been repeated, regardless of who the funders or contractors are."
After IRN learned about the November protest, it hired a researcher to investigate the situation in Laos in January 2003. A report based on that field visit, "New Lao Dam Embroiled in Controversy: Report from a Fact-Finding Mission to the Nam Mang 3 Hydropower Project," is now available at www.irn.org.
The 40-MW Nam Mang 3 Hydropower Project, located 80 kilometers northeast of Vientiane, is currently under construction. It is being financed by the Lao
government and China Export-Import Bank. At least 15,000 people will face impacts to their livelihoods due to Nam Mang 3. Sources close to the
project report that construction was also halted last year after the World Bank and IMF expressed concerns over the project approval process. The
institutions may be concerned that poor implementation of Nam Mang 3 will undermine the Bank's case for financing the massive Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project in central Laos.
The experience with Nam Mang 3 thus far echoes that of other hydro projects in Laos. The Asian Development Bank-funded Nam Leuk and Theun-Hinboun hydropower projects, completed in the late 1990s, were troubled by poor implementation. Thousands of people have suffered from unmitigated impacts to fisheries, vegetable gardens, water supplies and health. "The experience with hydropower in Laos brings up fundamental questions regarding the Lao government's ability to ensure that infrastructure projects are adequately monitored, that compensation is fairly and fully distributed and that environmental issues are properly addressed," says Wong. "Until the government proves it has the institutional capacity and political will to successfully implement these projects, international financial institutions should not support dams in Laos, including Nam Theun 2."