With cholera on the rise as extreme weather worsens, protecting water is key, officials say
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AlertNet) – Floods are an annual occurrence in Cameroon’s rainy season, but this year the possibility of damage to land or property is not what worries people most. The biggest threat is an invisible one.
Since 2010, spiralling cases of water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery have alarmed Cameroon’s health authorities and much of the population. Flooding triggered by heavy rains has overwhelmed the poor urban drainage system, contaminating the water supply.
The extreme weather, which experts believe is associated with climate change, continues to pose a threat to drinking water supplies, forcing the government, non-governmental organisations and citizens to find ways to ensure that one of life’s most basic necessities doesn’t become life-threatening.
The government, which has advised people not to drink untreated water, is now recommending the use of water filters to deal with the growing threat.
In March, the government standardized the price of a 20-litre filter at 30,000 CFA (about $63), making it affordable at least for most urban Cameroonian households.
ADVANCING CHOLERA
Rains over the past two years have been heavier than normal, and 2010 saw an outbreak of cholera in the Far North region. This year, cases have also been reported in the nation’s capital, Yaounde, and its principal business city, Douala. The disease has infected 20,000 people nationwide, with more than 700 reported deaths.
“The rains in Yaounde and its surrounding villages began unusually very early this year in the month of February, coming well before its normal time in the month of July,” said Patrick Akwa, secretary general of the Ministry of the Environment.
“This has caused a lot of floods and water contamination because enough preventive measures were not taken before now,” Akwa added.
Most Cameroonians remain highly vulnerable to health problems from dirty water, officials said.
“The use of contaminated water for drinking and bathing is one of the pathways for infectious disease that has continued to wreak havoc in our communities,” said Marie Therese Obama, Cameroon’s Minister for Women’s Empowerment and the Family.
Only 37 percent of Cameroon’s nearly 20 million people have access to piped water, according to the government. The remainder are particularly exposed to the risk of water-related disease contamination.
But even those with piped water have been alarmed to see its colour change to brown when they turn on their taps.
Health minister Andre Mama Fouda said that the discolouration was due to residues of mud particles in the water caused by flooding, but insisted that the piped supplies were treated and thus safe for drinking. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that in the context of increasing disease, the appearance of the water made people uncomfortable.
Mercy Engame, 26, a teacher in Yaounde, bought two filters when she noticed the change in the water colour, and said they have given her family peace of mind.
“When the government announced a cholera outbreak in Yaounde, we knew we were on the safe side,” said Engame.
In rural areas, meanwhile, communities are teaming up with non-governmental organisations to safeguard their drinking water through the use of innovative and low-cost bio-sand filters.
According to Henry Njakoi, Cameroon country director of Heifer International, an anti-poverty NGO that has been introducing bio-sand filters to villages in the Centre and Littoral regions of the country, the filter is a cost-effective solution to the country’s water crisis, especially in rural areas where people live on barely one dollar a day.
Njakoi explained that the technology involves a concrete column about one metre tall, containing sand and gravel graded in size from coarse to fine. When water is poured in and seeps through the system, impurities are removed. Even muddy water becomes sparkling clean.
DIRT TO PURIFY?
“Using dirt to purify water does not immediately strike anyone as the ideal way to provide clean drinking water to the population,” said Peter Njodzeka of the Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC), in a 2011 report on access to clean and safe water in Cameroon. But the counterintuitive technology works.
“Research has shown that water filtered by this equipment, if well constructed, is 97 percent pure,” Njakoi said on a recent field visit to Efok village, some 45 km (28 miles) from Yaounde, where Heifer International has installed bio-sand filters.
The NGO provides technical expertise, and locally sourced materials and labour are used, keeping the cost of a filter for a single household down to 7,000 CFA francs ($15).
The Northwest region, where LWDGC has supplied bio-sand filters, has not been affected by cholera, according to Njodzeka, but villagers have been plagued by typhoid fever, dysentery and intestinal worms.
“Now these health problems are largely gone and households have experienced a significant drop in their annual healthcare spending since the filters were installed,” Njodzeka said.
A 2006 World Health Organization report points out that the burden of climate sensitive diseases worldwide is greater in the poorest population.
Njakoi, of Heifer International, also cites the economic benefits to the poor that come from reduced spending on treatment for water borne diseases.
He hopes the inexpensive bio-sand filter could be adopted on a wider scale not only in Cameroon but throughout Central Africa, to help provide clean water and help poor rural inhabitants battle flood-related health issues.
Elias Ntungwe Ngalame is an award-winning environmental writer with Cameroon's Eden Group of newspapers.
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