Only 20 percent of Pakistanis have access to safe and clean drinking water. The rest of the population has either no access to water at all or only has access to contaminated water daily. Health experts suggest people who are concerned about their health must drink water after boiling it.
Three million people of the whole population in Pakistan are suffering from water-borne diseases. Hepatitis A and E and cholera are the most spread diseases due to contaminated water. 250,000 children die of waterborne diseases annually.
People should use mineral water or boiled water to stay healthy. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, even bottled water is not clean and hygienic and secondly, bottled water is not affordable by the poor to buy liters of filtered water for daily consumption. Moreover, filtration plants in the country are mostly established in urban cities. Not everyone has access to them, that is why they boil water so that no disease can attack them and no waterborne diseases are born.
According to a survey, people who are concerned about their health prefer drinking water by boiling it. Health experts keep on warning the public to boil water for 10 minutes before its consumption. Especially, in the monsoon season when water-borne diseases have more chances to occur i.e. diarrhea, hepatitis A, E, and gastroenteritis.
The bottled water business in the country is mostly a fraud. These bottles are filled with normal tap water and after some basic filtering, they are poured into bottles. People consume it by considering it as clean. That is why experts always recommend boiling water before drinking it. On the other hand, plastic bottles are recycled by picking them up from the trash that is the root cause of environmental pollution. These bottles are then recycled and refilled with unhygienic water and are supplied in the market. These local companies put attractive tags on the bottles that people of Pakistan trust blindly.
Karachi is a big city and also the most polluted city in the country. Water pollution is one of them. More than half of the Karachi consume dirty water and unfortunately, they cannot consume boiled water too. Boiling the water requires electricity or gas but, in most of the seasons, more than half of the Karachi run out of electricity and gas too.
Pakistan started the scheme of building water filters in different areas of the country but, what of their cleanliness? These filtration plants are used by many and again people end up drinking dirty water. The only option that is left is boiling the water.
Illiteracy is also a factor and people are not aware of drinking clean water. They do not heed over this issue rather, drinking water directly from taps is acceptable for them. That is the big reason that people of small sub-urban areas are suffering more from diseases than people who have awareness.
Another issue is buying juices from street vendors. Contaminated water is used to make them, this ultimate negligence towards health is the leading cause of many diseases.
Drinking boiled water is not the people’s priority, partly due to lack of awareness and partly due to blind trust in bottled water. Only a few people in the county are blessed with clean drinking water.
Image source link
