Water borne illness in third world countries
Danielle H Woods
Ivy Tech Community College
October 16, 2013

Water borne illness in third world countries
Third countries have myriad problems that interrelate in intricate ways to cause a series of problems for their citizens. One major problem in the third world countries is the disease burden. Waterborne diseases make a major contribution to diseases’ burden in the third world. As per the World Health Organization, waterborne diseases contribute to about 4.1% to the daily burden of diseases on the planet daily. WHO puts the contribution of sanitation, poor hygiene, and unsafe water contribution to waterborne diseases at 88% (Guidelines for drinking-water quality, 2011). Water Bourne diseases result to more than 1.8million deaths every year (Lee, 2008).
A Waterborne disease terms any diseases whose transmission occurs through pathogens present in contaminated water. These diseases are particularly rampant in the third world. Waterborne diseases are responsible for the death of one out of every five deaths under the age of five reported on the planet. The third world countries lack the sophisticated mechanisms of treating water for human use. In third world countries, accessing water is not always possible let alone accessing clean water.
Developed nations use systems that filter and chlorinate drinking water eliminating pathogens. This explains why diseases like typhoid, dysentery, and cholera only run rampant in the third world. Apart from the lack of proper sanitation systems, third world nations exhibit very low levels of human development indices. Human development indices factor in elements such as education and health care.
Lack of an adequate education makes third world citizens to live in oblivion in regards to waterborne diseases. Despite the discovery of waterborne diseases and their cure happening many years ago, many uneducated people think along superstitious lines when it comes to such diseases. This means that such people will neither exercise caution nor get appropriate medical attention. Instead, they will seek superstitious intervention.
Third world countries also lack elaborate health systems that can address the health needs of their citizens. Hospitals are not only under equipped to deal with waterborne diseases; they are also inaccessible by a substantial number of needy citizens. For example, the forested South American nation Peru has citizens who cannot access maternity services due to forests and inaccessible roads. This means that even waterborne diseases victims face the same plight. This is also common in sub-Saharan nations where even hospital beds cannot service waterborne patients especially in times of disease outbreak.
Microorganisms that are notorious waterborne diseases causers include protozoa and bacteria (Smith, 2000). These parasites mainly invade the intestines, tissues, and the circulatory systems of human beings from where they cause diseases and suffering of their victims. Viruses also cause some waterborne diseases coupled with other metazoan parasites found in contaminated water.
Many people are aware of common water diseases such as typhoid, dysentery, and cholera but they remain ignorant about diseases caused by metazoan organisms such as Schistosomiasis caused by fluke worms. The popular ring worms are the nematodes which are metazoans that invade the human intestines causing a series of complications to the digestive system.
As stated earlier, waterborne causing pathogens are present in contaminated water. These pathogens can get into the human body in a couple of ways. For instance, some pathogens such as the metazoans can get through human skin and invade the circulatory system. From the circulatory system, protozoans go through a series of stages and end up in the intestines where they wreak havoc. This means that showering, swimming, and doing laundry with contaminated water predisposes people to pathogens. Pathogens can also get into the human body through ingestion. Here, humans take pathogens with contaminated water or food and beverages prepared with contaminated water. Infants and the elderly are particularly susceptible to waterborne diseases due to their weak immunities (3rd World Water Congress: drinking water treatment : selected proceedings of the 3rd World Water Congress of the International Water Association, held in Melbourne, Australia, 7-12 April 2002, 2002). Children’s immunity experiences most of the diseases for the first time making the body not to respond adequately to the pathogens. Their immunity improves with age as their immunity continues to register these pathogens and develops their antibodies. Elderly people have weak immunity as immunity only gets impaired with old age. Protozoan diseases include Amoebiases, Cryptosporidiosis, Cyclosporiasi, Giardiasis, and Microsporidiosis among others. Each disease listed above has its own protozoan pathogen. Each protozoan has a common habitat in contaminated water. Such habitats include sewage, on flies from contaminated water, animal manure, run off water, groundwater, leaks, and where people share water with animals. Common symptoms of these diseases include diarrhea, weight loss, low appetite, cramps, nauseas, fatigue, bloating, fever, and muscle aches. | | | |
Some parasitic infections particularly from metazoans include Schistosomiasis and Dracunculiasis. The former is caused by genus Schistosoma members while the latter is caused by larvae. Schistosoma predominantly exists in snails in contaminated fresh water while the Dracunculiasis causing larvae ecological niche is commonly stagnant water. Common symptoms of these two diseases include blood stained urine, itchiness, rashes, chills, fever, as well as muscle aches for Schistosomiasis. Dracunculiasis symptoms include diarrhea, asthmatic conditions, nausea, and rashes.
Perhaps the most popular waterborne illnesses are the bacterial ones. Such include diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery. The bacterium Vibrio Cholerae causes cholera which is among the fastest killing illness known to man (Smith, 2000). The disease in severe cases causes hypovolemic shock which causes death within a day. Other symptoms of cholera include diarrhea, nausea, pulses, vomiting, and nose bleeding.
Dysentery is another bacterial waterborne disease which results into blood stained stool and vomiting blood. Salmonella Typhi causes typhoid fever. The fever causes profuse sweeting of patients with body temperatures going to as high as 40 degrees Celsius. Rose spots which are red spots on the abdomen of patients are also a typhoid symptom. Typhoid like most waterborne disease also causes diarrhea. However, typhoid results into a rather unique symptom of enlarged liver and spleen which takes less than 3 weeks to kill patients.
Bacterial waterborne diseases occur due to ingestion of bacteria in contaminated water (Smith, 2000). Typhoid particularly comes as a result of consuming water contaminated with the stool of an infected person.
Many people are aware of diseases such as polio, hepatitis A, and SARS. However, most people do not know that these are viral waterborne diseases. Coronavirus causes SARS which the acronym for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Apart from causing a severe fever, SARS causes serious respiratory complications which are highly fatal. A manifestation of SARS havoc is SARS pandemic in China which devastated the populous Asian nation some years back.
The Hepatitis A Virus causes hepatitis A which although not chronic results into some symptoms such as abdominal pain, weight loss, fever, itchiness, and depression which jeopardizes good health. Polio is another viral disease which is almost extinct in many nations. This disease causes delirium, headaches and paralysis.
If one looks at the above diseases, one notices a trend of symptoms that can cause unproductiveness and others that require immediate medical attention. This means that third world nations need to allocate resources to water treatment to prevent waterborne diseases which will avoid all the losses that come with these diseases. Poverty stands in the way of the eradication of water borne diseases in third world nations where financial incapacity limits infrastructural development, healthcare and education on hygiene and diseases.
Some third world dwellers are so poor they cannot afford to even boil water for drinking in addition to cooking expenses (Chauhan, 2003). Waterborne diseases make many unproductive; put many in the care of healthy ones and wipe off millions of these people in the third world nations. That’s why many foundations are trying to reach out to such communities to stop these series of misery.

References
3rd World Water Congress: drinking water treatment : selected proceedings of the 3rd World Water Congress of the International Water Association, held in Melbourne, Australia, 7-12 April 2002. (2002). London: IWA Pub.
Chauhan, S. K. (2003). Who puts the water in the taps? community participation in Third World drinking water, sanitation, and health. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.
Guidelines for drinking-water quality (4. ed.). (2011). Geneva: World Health Organization.
Lee, K. (2008). World Health Organisation. London: Routledge.
Smith, J. M. (2000). Water-borne bacterial diseases in Third World countries. New York: Longhorn.