Profound deprivation Shortage of potable water in Philippines

If YOU have read this far, you are probably among those who can get clean water with a flick of your kitchen tap. But 19 other Filipinos dont have that privilege. Daily, they draw from polluted wellsand court disease, even death.

Thus, the most fractured human right here is that of a child to celebrate his or her first birthday. Out of every 1,000 children, 21 never make it to their first birthday. Many succumb to water-borne ailments.

Two events half a world apart one in Sweden, the other the Philippines, jogged the memory this week. In Stockholm, scientists, bankers and economists opened last Sunday the 20th World Water Week conference.

In Manila, the United Nations Childrens Fund underscored what many here fret about: we will probably flub meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of lower maternal and infant death rates by 2015.

In the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, infant mortality rate stands at 42. Thats five times the death toll of Hong Kong tourists in last months hostage-taking fiasco. And those fatalities occur year in and year out.

The probe into the Quirino Grandstand massacre, led by the tough Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, dominates headlines and the evening news. But those tiny, rough-hewn coffins on country roads or city alleys disappear into the woodwork.

Lack of water, poor sanitation, chronic hunger and patchy medical care continue to take a savage toll. In Basilan, for example, 66 out of every 100 persons lack safe water. Health personnel attend only 58 out of every 100 births here. Compare that to 99 in Thailand.

These are preventable deaths. Malaysias infant mortality is down to 7. Singapore whittled it down to 4. Among infants born of poor families, death rates are two to three times higher than those for the rich, the Asian Development Bank notes.

The Stockholm meet focuses on water quality challenge. Thats the polite phrase for poisoned wells. Last year 1.6 million children from poor countries died due to diseases stemming from tainted water. Nearly 300 million school days were lost. An entire generation (was) lost to a preventable cause, a conference paper notes.

Dr Rita R Colwell of Johns Hopkins University will be honored for research on water-borne diseases that helped save millions of lives. Cambodias Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) will walk away with the coveted Stockholm Industry Water Award. Despite ravages of Pol Pots genocide terror, the agency built a world-class water agency. The PPWSA pumps water into nine out of 10 households 24 hours a day. It stanched water leakages from 72 percent to 6 percent.

Were working on reducing water loss to 4 per cent by 2020, says PPWSA head Ek Sonn Chan. Thatd place us in the same league as Singapore and Tokyo.

Unicef country representative Vanessa Tobin stresses giving priority to conflict-wracked Mindanao. If the Philippines wants to achieve the MDGs without major disparities, then focus must be put on Mindanao. In the ARRM, for example, only 40 per cent of children complete primary school. The national average is 75 per cent.

Armed conflict displaced more than 700,000 in Mindanao. Almost 84,000 fled inter-clan violence, dubbed as rido. As Ramadhan ends, peace talks between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front could resume. The children of Mindanao have the biggest stake in these prickly talks.

Water use is increasing at twice the rate of population growth, the Stockholm conference heard. Climate change, however, is altering even that old skewed equation. It is uncertain where the new balance, if any, will emerge.

The amount of water available per person is shrinking, everyone agrees on that. Over the next 25 years, the number of people in countries with water crisis will increase from 700 million to 2.2 billion, the UN Development Programme estimates.

Whether in the Philippines, Indonesia, Haiti or Gabon, the poor pay far more for water than those who live in affluent enclaves. In Cebu City, a squatters shack pays 13 times for the same water that a home in gated Maria Luisa gets, notes the latest UN World Water Development Report.

Households linked to municipal systems get the cheapest water. The poor plod through intermediaries, from tanker operators to vendors, to buy murky water in cans. Every step they are forced to take away from the water source adds to the price. Many solutions are simple and affordable. Installing a flush toilet in the home increases by 59 per cent a childs chances of surviving to the first birthday. Egypt slashed death rates by almost 57 percent through toilets in homes.

Challenged by rapid industrial and urban growth, Asian governments need to think how to use wastewater, ADB senior advisor Arjun Thapan says. Untreated water, meanwhile, pollutes water bodies. Negros has set up low-cost, sustainable treatment. In Bali, Indonesia, 12 five-star hotels earn US$2 million in profits annually by treating water. In China, treated wastewater is used for greening landscapes.

The beginnings of a wastewater revolution are there. It remains hobbled by traditions, beliefs, politics, poverty and an insufficient knowledge base. These are important to understand and overcome, Thapan adds. President Aquino must ensure that water is at the core of his poverty-reduction initiatives. Not having access to clean water is a euphemism for profound deprivation, the Human Development Report points out. The crisis in water and sanitation is above all a crisis for the poor.

Philippine Daily Inquirer