Saturday, 30 October 2010

Dirty Water !

Saturday October 30th
Today has been an extremely educational one for me. After spending the morning in the hospital, I went for a walk with a US undergraduate, who has been here for 5 months, and his Professor to a nearby village. He is studying the people who have suffered bowel perforations to look at why these are occurring so frequently here. We visited a man who had survived surgery 3 months ago He looked well but was rather drunk (!) He showed us where he needs to take water from when the standpipe outside his house isn’t working. It isn’t difficult to see why people so easily fall ill when their water supplies are so polluted. Interestingly no one seems to collect the rainwater from their roof which seems crazy in an area having over 500cm rainfall per year. There is a scheme being developed to try to encourage the use of sand filters to purify the water for drinking. Prevention has to better that cure!
This man survived an operation for bowel perforation due to typhoid 3 months ago

This is the small polluted water source the family have to rely on half of the time

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