NEWS report published on Tuesday said that pregnant women in the country’s southern coastal region are largely affected with anemia and high blood pressure during pregnancy because of high salt intake in potable water. The coastal regions are highly infiltrated with saline water from the sea and the use of such water for drinking and such other household purposes is making the expecting mothers vulnerable to high risks of maternal complications and sickness to newborn babies. This is the finding of a study report conducted upon 202 pregnant women who came to take health service to Dacope Upazila Health Complex in Khulna district. This study established a case for shock to the people of the coastal region that says most expecting mothers and their children are not safe.
It appears that salinity in drinking water is associated with increased risk of (pre)eclampsia and gestational hypertension in this population. For this reason, a child may be born early not matured and faulty in shape and smaller than usual. Even a child may die. High brackish water intake is also closely associated with the risk of hypertension in adults. Besides, people of the southern part of Bangladesh especially in delta belt have been suffering a lot from myriads of diseases caused with arsenic contamination, water pollution etc.
Bangladesh’s coastal population, about 40 million in some estimate, relies heavily on natural water sources like ponds, rivers and tube-wells for collecting drinking water. These sources have become severely saline infiltrated from seawater intrusion caused by environmental changes, and man-made factors including poor water management and shrimp farming. Salinity has already encroached 100 km inland from the Bay of Bengal, and the impacts can be increasingly exacerbated by sea level rise due to climate change and excessive groundwater withdrawals from aquifers.
Given that the coastal populations in Bangladesh are confronted with high salinity exposure, which is predicted to further increase as a result of sea level rise and other environmental influences, it is important, as we believe to develop affordable access to sweet water and to local water with low salt content. One remedy may come from harvesting rainwater and its storage. To preserve rainwater and make available existing water salinity free, traditional aquifer system in small scale are used now as a preemptive measure. But that is not enough to protect people of the region from water-centered disease.
We suggest that the Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) system; which is though highly sophisticated could be put in use in the region to provide safe drinking water to the people. We can’t neglect the case; which is poising a big threat to every mother and the newborn child.
