Children play near polluted bank of river Yamuna on World Water Day on March 22, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Shams Qari—Barcroft Media/Getty Images
Limited Access to Clean Water Among India's Poor Spawns Coronavirus Concerns
Mar 18, 2020
(NEW
DELHI) — Dharam Singh Rajput can’t afford to buy hand sanitizer, which
could help ward off transmission of the coronavirus in his community.
The
Rajput family could opt for something more basic — soap and water — to
achieve hand hygiene. But sometimes there is no clean running water in
their neighborhood, which sits next to open sewage canals and mounds of
garbage in the heart of New Delhi, India's capital. “The kind of water
we have access to has the potential to cause more diseases instead of
warding off the virus if we use it to wash our hands,” Rajput said.
Experts say keeping hands clean
is one of the easiest and best ways to prevent transmission of the new
coronavirus, in addition to social distancing. But for India’s homeless
and urban poor who live in thousands of slums across major cities and
towns, maintaining good hygiene can be nearly impossible.
Read more: India Is the World's Second-Most Populous Country. Can It Handle the Coronavirus Outbreak?
“It
could prove disastrous for people who don’t have access to clean
water,” said Samrat Basak, the director of the World Resource
Institute's Urban Water Program in India. With India being the world's
second-most populous country, and having weak health care facilities and
growing concerns that there may be an undetected communal spread of the
virus, the risks associated with the lack of clean water aren’t being
overstated. UNICEF said last week that almost 20% of urban Indians do
not have facilities with water and soap at home.
What could make things worse, experts say, is that social distancing
is nearly impossible in many Indian cities that are among the world's
most densely populated areas. So far, the government has apparently been
able to keep a lid on community transmission of the virus. Authorities
have confirmed 147 cases and three deaths, all linked to foreign travel or direct contact with someone who caught the disease abroad.
While the coronavirus can be deadly, particularly for the elderly
and people with other health problems, for most people it causes only
mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. Some feel no
symptoms at all and the vast majority of people recover.
India's
government has made fervent appeals to the public to practice social
distancing and good hand hygiene. India also was one of the first
countries to essentially shut its borders and deny entry to all but a
select few foreigners. But in a country as big as India, community
transmission is all but inevitable, experts say.
“Clean
water is the first line of defense,” said V.K. Madhavan, India chief
executive at WaterAid, a global advocacy group for water and sanitation.
“If there is no access to clean water, the situation could worsen.”
India’s
clean water problem isn’t new. Hundreds of thousands of people wait in
line every day to fill buckets from government water trucks. Hospitals
and schools struggle with clean water supplies. People are forced to
wash utensils and clothes in dirty water.
About 600 million Indians face acute water shortages, according to government think tank NITI Aayog.
The
water crisis hits the poor particularly hard since wealthy people can
pay for water from private sources that those living in slums can't
afford. The mortality rate due to inadequate or unsafe water is also
high. About 200,000 people die each year in India from diseases related
to unclean water. Insufficient water also leads to food insecurity.
“When
clean drinking water runs out, people will have no choice but to rely
on unsafe water,” said Dr. Anant Bhan, a global health researcher. “It
could expose India’s huge population to extreme vulnerability.”
Government
promises to provide clean water to many Indians have so far failed
despite efforts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that have been
internationally lauded.
“Access
to clean water is a basic human right,” said Madhavan. “No one should
fear losing their life because they couldn’t practice the first line of
defense, which is hand washing."