The number of patients admitted to hospitals with water borne diseases has increased about 200 percent in the last two decades. The National Conservation Strategy (NCS) report reveals that about 40 percent of deaths were related to water-borne diseases.
Similarly, 25 to 30 percent of all hospital admissions were connected to water-borne bacterial and parasitic conditions, with 60 percent of infant deaths associated with the same infections, stated Professor Dr Abdul Qadir, while addressing the audience of a symposium on the "Importance and Utility of Safe Drinking Water" organised by the Baidarie Sialkot on Wednesday.
He added that drinking and bathing in polluted water and sanitation problems were the most common routes for the spread of diseases with symptoms like abdominal pain, hair loss, numbness in hands, loss of appetite, eye infections, irritation of skin, fever, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, giardiasis, and cryptosporidiosis and guinea worm infections.
Dr Qadir said that drinking water was contaminated due to the effluents of tanneries, which caused over 82% diseases of the bowels, like dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and other ailments in Sialkot and its surrounding areas. Since a substantial faction of the rural population depended on natural water bodies for their daily water requirements, and for their livestock, serious health and material losses could be expected in the downstream areas of Sialkot, as tannery effluent had a residual effect, which could be transmitted into food chain.
Speaking on the occasion Professor Arshid Mehmood Mirza said that Sialkot had been known as Pakistan's largest Sports and Leathers goods producing city, along with leather-related industries, textile, and metallurgical, pharmaceutical industries.
There were over 264 Tanneries, 244 leather garments/products manufacturing units, 900 leather sports good manufacturing units, 57 rice husking units and 14 flour mills present in Sialkot. Most of the industries were scattered in and around the city.
He added that, according to a research study conducted by the Environmental Biology Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, a total of 52 million litres per day of waste water, along with 1.1 million waste from tanneries, is discharged into the Nullah Aik and Pulkhu, sewerage drains, ponds and open agricultural lands from Sialkot city. According to another estimate, each tannery in Sialkot district generates 547-814 m3/day volume of wastewater (ETPI 1998).
The Sialkot city and industrial units have no wastewater treatment facilities. This large volume of industrial and urban waste has been considered a major threat to ground and surface waters of the study area. He added that the quality of ground water- a main source of drinking and irrigation is deteriorating due to untreated discharge of industrial and urban effluents and chemical substances in agriculture (fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides).
Professor Mirza shared the fact that irrespective of the source of pollution, groundwater required further purification to ensure its suitability for human consumption. Speaking on the occasion, Ms Hina Noureen, President Baidarie, emphatically demanded that the Government should ensure the control of heavy metal contamination of ground water and if this issue was left unattended, this would pose problems in providing safe drinking water for human beings.
Environmental awareness should be increased in the people and adequate regulations should be formulated and proper management of waste sites should be made by the local municipal authorities. She said that industrial water pollution must be checked by implementing strictly, the pollution control laws.
Professor Muhammad Naeem was of the view that control of the disposal of untreated effluents around the industries needs to be enforced. He added that the high concentration of heavy metals and other hazardous substances in the ground water, in the country in general and in Sialkot city in particular, should be assessed and the needed quality measures should be taken.
Speaking on the occasion, Chaudhry Muhammad Iqbal said that the existing set-up of the tanneries had spoilt the fertility of the soil, destroyed the quality of drinking water and given rise to many incurable diseases of the digestive and respiratory systems. He demanded that necessary precautionary measures should be taken to contain the risks of below the international permeable levels, otherwise the health and survival of human and animal life in this area would be at stake.
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