Bottled, bacterial

Are we all willing to play our part to keep our families and communities safe from water-borne diseases?

Nepalis have long struggled to access safe drinking water despite successive governments’ pledge to provide quality water through initiatives like the “One House, One Tap” national campaign and regular supply of the much-anticipated Melamchi Drinking Water Project in the Kathmandu Valley. Yet the project’s stop-start supply has forced Kathmanduities to rely on jarred and public tap water. As jarred and bottled water are considered safe, they are preferred in public places, households, schools and offices. However, come monsoon, even these so-called purified water containers are contaminated with harmful microbes, pathogens and minerals. The monsoon has just started, and the National Public Health Laboratory —the health ministry’s central lab—has already discovered faecal coliforms and E. coli in samples collected from jar water, as in the previous years. Health authorities have advised common folks to refrain from using piped and bottled water without first boiling it.