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2 October 2003 by Teresita Usapdin in Kratie Province Every weekday before going to school, 14-year-old Phang Savy, 14, walks 30 metres to the nearby Preak Tea river to fill a pail of water. When she returns home, she empties it into a bucket fitted with a ceramic water filter (CWF). It produces enough safe water for her whole family for the day. Phang and her family are among the almost 1,000 people in Maroeum village that get their water from Preak Tea river. In total, some 15,000 people in 19 villages in this part of Kratie province, about 250 km northeast of Phnom Penh, rely on this source. “Preak Tea river is a source of drinking water not just for us villagers but also for our cows, for water buffalo and all the animals and insects that you find here, including the mosquitoes,” says Phang as she lifts her glass to drink, before adding: “It is also a place for bathing, playing and washing clothes.” Phang’s mother, 48-year-old community worker Loun Ny arrives home and joins the conversation: “Preak Tea river is practically the source of life here, despite all the rubbish and debris that come with it.” Water in the Preak Tea river comes from the northern province of Mondulkiri and neighbouring Vietnam. Loun Ny says the water gets dirtier in the rainy season especially when there is flood. “On rainy days, we collect rain water, keep it for one month and either boil or put in the Ceramic Water Filter for safe drinking,” Loun Ny tells visiting Red Cross volunteers. Hum Sophon, Cambodian Red Cross (CRC) programme director, says a lack of clean water is contributing to the high levels of diarrhoeal diseases, acute respiratory infections, malaria, and dengue fever in children in Cambodia. The most recent UNICEF data show that only 26 per cent of Cambodia’s rural population has access to adequate drinking water compared to 55 per cent of the rural population living in the world’s least developed countries. The situation is particularly bad in four remote and impoverished north-eastern provinces - Kratie, Mondulkiri, Rotanakiri and Stung Teng - where the main sources of drinking water are springs, rivers, streams and rainwater. Slightly more than one-fifth of children under the age of five living in these provinces have diarrhoea in a given two-week period, according to the 2000 Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey. The same survey says more than 50 per cent of under-fives in the north-east have moderately or severely stunted growth, an indication of chronic, incapacitating malnutrition. “The health status of the Cambodian children is grim. Almost one in 10 Cambodian children dies before his or her first birthday,” says Charles Lerman, regional health coordinator of the American Red Cross, which is supporting the CRC’s Community Hygiene and Water Purification (CHWP) project, along with the International Development Enterprises and the Freeman Foundation. The locally produced ceramic water filter is part of the CHWP project, a one-year scheme that concludes in December that aims to reduce childhood illness and death from diarrhoeal disease by providing safe water containers and disseminating health and hygiene messages to communities. The CRC is distributing one ceramic water filter to some 6,000 households in 53 villages. The ceramic filter is a clay pot that holds approximately 10 litres, allowing a family to produce up to 30 litres a day. “It is cheap, portable, effective and can be used and maintained even by the poorest families,” Lerman says. The CWF is impregnated with colloidal silver, which neutralises any pathogens not already captured by a clay matrix through which the water passes. Although the ceramic filter technology is new to Cambodia, NGOs have successfully used them in Central America for more than 10 years. Quality testing in Cambodia has shown that after four months, 98 per cent of water samples from these filters met WHO low-risk guidelines. “The water filter is very convenient. We have stopped boiling water since we started using it three months ago. So far, none of my children has had diarrhoea or any disease,” says a smiling Loun Ny. Related links: Activities in Cambodia Water and sanitation International Year of Fresh Water Make a donation |
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