DADU, Jan 24: About 200,000 children fall victim to diarrhoea every year in Pakistan and the disease can easily be tackled by keeping ourselves, says Bakht Jamal Soomro, executive director of JORDAN, an NGO.

He said at a hygiene fair organised by his NGO in collaboration with Pakistan Safe Drinking Water and Hygiene Promotion Project, a USAID-funded project that washing hands with soap and drinking clean water could save people from diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases.

Project Coordinator Khadim Hussain said that medical science was witness to the fact that a large number of diseases were caused by drinking contaminated water. Washing hands with soap before and after meals and after using washroom could help keep away several diseases, he said.

He said that boiling water for five minutes and keeping it in clean plastic bottles for eight hours in the sun were quite simple methods to make water free of contamination.

Dr. Aziz Ahmed Chandio, DO, confirmed that the figure of children dying of diarrhoea was alarmingly high in Pakistan and said that the main reason for the spread of the disease was lack of cleanliness inside and around homes.

Basheer Ahmed Thahim, vice-president of PPP’s Dadu chapter, said that the government should take install filter plants and direct local governments to take over control of the filter plants, which had been installed throughout the country to provide safe drinking water to people.

Taluka Naib Nazim Najeebullah Panhwar stressed that the government should take effective steps to make clean drinking water available to people to help save precious lives.

Several stalls of cosmetics, henna, clothes, jewellery and food items were set up in the mela in which a large number of women and children took part.

The programme was aimed at improving standard of family hygiene by mobilising the community to observe hygienic behaviour at home and consume safe drinking water.