Safe drinking water may reduce infant mortality

Published in The Pioneer, Aug 2, 2007

Safe drinking water can help reduce infant mortality and improve human development indicators," said Hamid El Bashir, State representative of UNICEF office for Madhya Pradesh while speaking at inaugural session of the training programme being held on data analysis under multi district assessment of water safety (MDAWS) at Bhopal.

This is a four-day training programme which is being organised by the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) with support of UNICEF and Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) and MAPCOST Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology for twelve states, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Speaking at the meeting , Sudhir Saxena, chief engineer in Public Health Engineering Department, said that State has 4 lakh water sources and majority of them are dependent on ground water. Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) with support from UNICEF and Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) has completed a statewide water safety assessment programme.

Sam Godfrey, UNICEF's Water and Environment sanitation officer said that the experience on MDAWS data analysis in Madhya Pradesh will form the basis of providing training to the participants of other States. Based on the earlier training held at Bhopal in August 2006, MDAWS study was undertaken by all the participating States and data collection was completed. Overall programme will help to make water safety for India, which will help in programme planning and implementation nationwide.