Southern Africa: lack of clean groundwater a health threat

As the rainy season approaches, and sewage from pit latrines seep further into the Zimbabwe’s groundwater, Irene Ngubeni will be at risk as the country faces another possible cholera outbreak.

Even now, just before the rains have started falling Ngubeni is ill. She has travelled the 170 kilometres from her village in Matebeleland North to Bulawayo for treatment after drinking contaminated groundwater.

The stomach cramps that plague her, she believes, are a result of drinking unclean groundwater. She suspects that even though the water she drank comes from the village borehole, it could have been contaminated.

“Villagers still use open spaces as latrines and yes there is a possibility that waste has found its way into our drinking water,” she said.

[...] In this situation, however, Zimbabwe is not alone. Contaminated groundwater is a problem faced by many countries in southern Africa.

Only a few Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries are monitoring and properly managing groundwater, exposing millions of people living in rural areas with no access to clean water to waterborne diseases, experts say.

Up to 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s rural population and 90 percent in Swaziland rely on groundwater. But in the absence of proper monitoring of this vital resource, fecal matter from latrines that lie too close to boreholes has polluted people’s drinking water.

In some SADC areas groundwater is the only reliable water source with up 70 percent of the people and another 60 percent of the region’s poor rural communities using groundwater as their primary water source.

[...] Management of underground water is crucial if its contamination is to be avoided says Barbara Lopi, a communications specialist with the SADC Groundwater and Drought Management Project.

“An example (of this) is Zimbabwe where the cholera outbreak emanated from contaminated groundwater from a borehole,” Lopi said.

“Rural populations across the SADC region build their latrines near boreholes and this has helped spread diseases like cholera,” Lopi told a seminar on Integrated Water Resources Management recently held in South Africa.

Sylvain Bertrand of OXFAM GB says groundwater is vital if SADC countries like Zimbabwe are to meet any of the MDGs.

[...] Early in 2010, SADC will set up the Groundwater Management Institute as part of efforts to respond to challenges presented by groundwater management in the region.

Related web site: SADC Groundwater and Drought Management Project.

Source: Ignatius Banda, IPS, 09 Oct 2009