Safer water for Uganda / by Richard G. Mugga

Safer. water for Uganda Village communities have already shown that given, proper guidance, they can protect their own springs without waiting for government or other assistance M ost country areas of Uganda suffer from a serious lack of adequate water supply. A large pro- portion of the population does not have re~sonable access to safe water and is without facilities for hygienic waste disposal. Particularly in remote communities, water sources are either absent, inadequate, dis- tant, polluted or unreliable. The consequences are the obvious ones: hardship and disease. Most rural communities cannot afford to pay for building, operating and maintaining their own water supply systems, so the government has to provide improved sources of water as a general service. Since water is a limited and valuable resource, and since its development requires high investment, it must be efficiently used and must be safe- guarded at the highest national level. In the pre-colonial days, water used to be collected from natural sources. People used to collect water from such rivers as the Nile, May- anja or Agago and from natural springs and dug wells. All these sources were open to contamin- ation. Subsequently most of the boreholes were drilled during the colonial days. But when one looks at their distribution throughout the country, most of them are concen- trated in the East and North of Uganda, while very few are found in Buganda, Toro and elsewhere. The present government has as its primary objective to establish a working democracy based on direct popular participation both as regards . decision-making and put- ting policies into effect. That is why democracy tops the Ten-point Pro- gramme. Development programmes are planned with the full realisation that rural areas will continue to contain the bulk of the population 6 by Richard G. Mugga and to provide the backbone to the economy for many decades to come. Improved rural water supply is meant to promote economic growth in these country areas. A new water supply may even encourage per- manent settlement in a particular area, and influence migration pat- terns by slowing down rural-to- urban migration rates. And of course, better health is expected to be a direct consequence. Among the constraints to provid- ing water supply systems in the countryside are the lack of any Safe water from a tap is the first step towards reducing the risk of water- borne diseases. Photo WHO/ M. Vanappelghem pre-existing organization, admin- istration, finance q.nd community participation. And the major prob- lems encountered in rural water supply are: shortage of water during the dry seasons, the long daily treks to carry water from the sources and the pollution of surface water which encourages such diseases as schisto- somiasis and dysentery. The first aim in improving the quality of drinking water is to reduce the effect of these diseases. Where water is scarce, people spend a great deal of time and · energy carrying a few litres of water from far-off sources, so the amount of water they use is the absolute minimum required for survival. When water is rationed for drinking and preparing food, it leaves very little for maintaining personal hygiene. Hardly surprisingly, people will prefer to draw water from a nearby stream which may be severely polluted rather than trek to a distant borehole. Any attempt to provide an alter- native source must have some advantage that the people will appreciate and the most obvious one may be convenience. Apart from using water for drinking and watering animals, river water can also be tapped for irrigation schemes, fish growing, recreation or to/ provide small-scale electricity power for local use. All such activi- ties which contribute directly and indirectly to the better health of the people concerned also contribute tremendously to rural development and the agrarian revolution. It has been proved that the inci- dence of water-related diseases cannot be reduced by supplying safe water alone. It must be accompanied by improved hygiene, health education and improved sanitation. Through health education the community should be made aware that water drawn from a treated or good source can be contaminated during transport to or storage in their homes. Some of the water-related diseases depend for their spread on material from human and animal faeces getting into drinking water. The chain of transmission may be broken by safe disposal of faeces as well as by protecting the water supplies. So it is important to improve sanitary excreta disposal by encouraging the use of properly constructed latrines and reducing indiscriminate defecation in or near water sources. Indeed, it is no use developing community water supply and sani- tation unless people are at the same time aware of the health impact. WORLD HEALTH, December 1988 From a public health point of view the essential requirements of a com- munity water supply are safety, adequacy, convenience and conti- nuity. Water-borne epidemics in Uganda are mainly associated with communal water supplies; and the larger the community, the greater the population exposed to risk at any one time. The most serious water-borne diseases, apart from cholera and typhoid fever , include dysentery, gastro-enteritis and certain virus infections. Lack of personal hygiene where water supply is limited can result in trachoma, scabies and yaws. New reservoirs and irrigation ditches may form breeding grounds for insects that transmit malaria and filariasis, or may provide a habitat for the water-snails that spread schistosomiasis or the cyclops that cause dracunculiasis (guinea worm). The government intends to pro- vide more protection for springs and shallow well construction, to main- tain existing valley tanks and build new ones, to drill new boreholes and increase the use of windmills to pump water, to rehabilitate existing piped water systems, and to extend the existing gravity-fed systems. Village communities have already shown that, given proper guidance, they can protect their own springs without waiting for the government or any other agency to provide construction materials such as cement. Shallow well construction has proved less successful because it calls for so much skilled labour; in any case they dry up during drought periods when water is needed most. The Ministry of Water Resources has acquired several new rotary drilling rigs to supplement those already procured with the help of international development agencies. Local pump repairers are being trained to cover the whole country and to be linked with the new borehole drilling programmes. Since water is life, a good water supply has high priority, and Uganda has to rely first and fore- most on its own strength, resources and abilities. The improvement in the quantity and quality of the water available to the people will undoubtedly promote better health for everybody, and this in turn will help to speed up the whole country's development process. • Where water is scarce, Ugandan vil- lagers spend much time and energy collecting it from far-oH sources. Photo WHO/Interfoto MTI WORLD HEALTH, December 1988