PESHAWAR, June 16: The World Health Organization has decided to prepare a report on the cost of treatment of diseases caused by pollution in the province and compare it with the cost of making the environment pollution-free.
"The organization will study the economic and other benefits the government and the people would get for the suggested interventions," the WHO's Emergency Medical Officer Dr Quaid Saeed said and added that the decision was taken in a meeting at the health directorate on Wednesday.
The meeting was attended by health officials and members of the WHO mission on environmental health. The mission informed the participants that initially it planned to assess the water pollution in Panjkora River in Dir and the Swat River and its impact on health but meetings with stakeholders showed that basic information on the level of pollution in the rivers was not available.
Environmental Protection Agency Director Dr Mohammad Bashir said air, water, noise and waste disposal pollution existed in all areas of the province. He said water at the sources was safe for drinking but it got contaminated in the distribution system because of getting mixed with sewage.
He said people in Dir and Swat districts faced water pollution because of unsafe sewerage system and disposal of industrial effluents into the rivers. He said the EPA was preparing a pollution profile of the districts, which would be completed in six months.
Public Health Director Dr Mohammad Zaheen said the people living along the rivers in Swat and Dir had a rudimentary system of sanitation and water supply. The sources of drinking water for a majority of the population were springs, wells and rivers while a small portion of it consumed tap water supplied by the municipalities, which also mixed with sewage.
He said all sewage from the population was drained into the rivers without treatment, resulting in high prevalence of water-borne ailments in the districts. Citing the reports prepared by the health management information system, he said many outbreaks of cholera had been reported from Swat in the past years.
A WHO official said the organization would look into the reports to assess the incidence of diarrhoea and water-borne diseases and estimate the cost of treatment and financial losses of the affected people to compare it with the cost of improving the water quality.
He said the WHO, the EPA and the health, public health engineering and local government departments would coordinate their activities to monitor the quantum of pollution in the province and devise joint strategies to enable the policy-makers to take measures to cope with the situation.
He said the WHO mission had visited the NWFP last year and the current visit had been planned on the request of senior provincial minister Sirajul Haq, who wanted it to investigate the level of pollution in River Swat, River Panjkora in Dir and the tributary of River Kabul, its pollution by Khazana Sugar Mills and its impact on the health of the people.
The mission, he said, deferred its visit to Swat and Dir because of non-availability of baseline information, but had visited the Khazana Sugar Mills and the adjacent tributary of the Kabul River, which was being polluted by the waste of the factory.
