Government departments to step up vigil to curb water-borne diseases

Well at a house in Jokatte, near Mangalore with contaminated water.

KOZHIKODE: Health and food safety departments have jointly initiated steps to put in place a mechanism to check the quality of water distributed by various agencies in the district. The additional district medical officer, who is also the district surveillance officer has directed the medical officers in the panchayats and block panchayats to take steps to check the quality of water from identified private and public water sources and chlorinate it to ensure that the public are getting safe drinking water.

The health department here is directly checking the identified water sources, which fall in the limits of grama panchayats and block panchayats. While the food safety officials concentrate on the water sources in the corporation and municipalities, special squads of the food safety department will continuously monitor all the private tanker lorries supplying drinking water. The move was taken to avoid supply of contaminated water which poses threat to public health.

Additional district medical officer Dr Asha Devi said, they have already issued direction to medical officers and some of them have commenced the work to chlorinate the public wells and to collect samples for testing from identified water sources to check its hygienic quality. "We have issued directions to prevent the outbreak of water-borne diseases as people will make use of all available drinking water sources with the strengthening of summer as severe drought is expected this year," said Dr Asha Devi.

District medical officer Dr R L Saritha said besides the medical officers some of the panchayats in the district have already formed their own mechanism to carry out periodical checking on hygienic quality of water in their respective panchayat limits. "We will submit a report to the concerned licencing authority on detecting supply of contaminated water by private agencies which will result in the cancellation of their licences," she said.

Meanwhile, food safety assistant commissioner O Sankaran Unni said the food safety department here has decided to take strict measures to check the quality of water supplied in tanker trucks in various parts of the district.

"We will carry out squad work to collect samples from tanker trucks to check its quality and also the sources from where these private parties fetch water for distribution in various parts of the district. Licence of the food safety department is mandatory for the supply of drinking water on tanker trucks by private parties. The license number should be displayed on the trucks distributing water,'' he said adding that the squads will be more active in the coming days.