Safe drinking water

Water plays a vital role in our lives as our health is greatly affected by the quantity and quality of the water available. Population growth, rapid urbanisation and industrialisation are imposing growing demands and pressures on water. The rising imbalance between supply and demand has led to shortage of water.
Enviornmental degradation in the form of persistent water-logging in certain areas and rapid decline of ground water levels, intrusion of saline water into fresh ground water is another problem caused by excessive and imbalanced pumping.
Water in Pakistan is becoming scarce. In order to meet the needs of growing population for water supply and the conservation of this precious resource, water resource projects would be essential.
Scarcity of water is the major issue the world over but availability of clean drinking water must be the basic issue to address now-a-days keeping in mind the gravity of the situation.
The severity of the drinking water issue in Pakistan can be gauged from the fact that every child in Pakistan faces an average of 3 episodes of diarrhea every year and over 200,000 children die each year as a result. In Karachi alone there are 10,000 deaths every year due to infections caused by contaminated drinking water.
The crisis of drinking water in the world is costing lives and, therefore, we must tackle this health hazard at the earliest.
About 1,200,000 people die of preventable water-born disease in Pakistan annually. The people of Pakistan and especially children have for long been victims of water-born infections. A large majority is still without adequate water sources, consequently suffering from various diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, cholera and other. A dire need exists to solve this pressing problem and find effective solution for safe drinking water.
A study in Karachi, showed that water samples from the three major sources of water for domestic use contained germs in excess as the levels permitted by any water standards.
Most of germs get into water through contamination with human and animal faeces, therefore, good hygiene habits must be adopted.
There are 147 million people in Pakistan and most of them have no access to safe drinking water. As the population grows the quality of water goes down. Same situation occurs all over the world, therefore, the United Nations declared water as a right. Unfortunately most of the people are denied of this right in our country.
Nowhere in Pakistan can untreated water be considered safe to drink even if it looks clean. Water must be disinfected before you drink it or use it for food preparation.
Several initiatives to educate people, especially mothers, on the health benefits of treating water and storing it safely at home is needed. Water must be filtered or boiled and kept in a clean container before being used as water that looks clean is not always clean and we should make sure that the water we are drinking is safe for drinking or not.
Water Facts
-- Every 8 seconds, a child dies of a water-related disease.
-- Water born diseases kill about 2 million adults each year.
-- More than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. By 2025, that number will be doubled that is more than 2 billion people.
-- About half of the world's diseases are transmitted through water.
-- There are 4 billion cases of diarrhea worldwide each year and 2.2 million avoidable deaths, it means a death after every 14 seconds.