A voyage against water borne diseases
- Feb 2, 2015
- 3 min read
By Camela Dawn Derecho
Clean, uncontaminated water is important for our health and our life. But lack of basic sanitation, not caring of the water, and the inability to property waste-water can cause terrible consequences. The use of polluted water can result in the outburst of water borne diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, and other gastrointestinal disease. Due to the scarcity of reported water borne parasites, the use of unsafe water lengthens. These water borne diseases are infectious and could be deadly.
Since our country now has been experiencing typhoons and floods lately, these environmental issues also results to making water unsafe and could cause polluted water. This then can lead to high incidence of water borne diseases.
The current environment that the Philippines is encountering now like uncontrolled deforestation in watershed areas that immediately causes flood with just a little amount of rainfall. Water pollution that was caused by floods leading to accidents of water borne diseases such as typhoid fever, diarrhea, malaria, dengue fever and whatnot.
The Diseases
One of these water borne disease is dengue which already killed thousands of people.
Dengue has been one of the deadliest illness that the people now in the Philippines are encountering. Based on DOH, the Philippines have seen 49,591 cases, decrease of some 61 percent.
Dengue fever is an infectious disease carried by mosquitoes and caused by any four related dengue viruses. This disease sometimes causes severe joint and muscle pain that feels like bones are breaking and was once called “break-bone fever”. The four types of dengue virus are DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3, and DEN-4. It is contagious from person to person and people get the virus from an infected Aedes mosquito.
There are three types of dengue fever: the typical uncomplicated dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHS) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS).
Another disease we can get from water contaminated by animal urines is Leptospirosis”. This is a bacterial disease that affects human and animals. Symptoms of this disease include high fever, vomiting, severe headache, and diarrhea. If this won’t be treated, it may result to kidney failure, liver failure, respiratory distress and meningitis. The fatality rates are low but if it’s left untreated, the recovery may take for months.
And another disease that we may suffer from mosquitos which is similar to dengue is “Malaria”.
The virus is transmitted to humans through the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito. It is caused by a single parasitic protozoa Plasmodium. The parasites multiply in the liver attacking red blood cells resulting in circles of chills, fever, and sweats with anemia.
Precautionary methods
These are just few of the diseases that we can get from unsafe and contaminated water. From the list of the diseases above, the people should be aware of the many dangerous things we can get if we won’t care about the water surrounding this planet and care less about what it would bring us.
These diseases won’t have a match on us because basically they are small and we can crush them as much as we want to but the fact that they are small, they are terrible. They can kill thousands of people and make their life miserable. These diseases are deadly that though they are small, they are feared by anyone in this world.
Water as one of the most important things we should have in order to live must be well taken care of. This means that from the water we drink, we use to take a bath and water our plants must be clean. The people must know that after washing the car, watering the plants and cleaning the garage with the use of water should directly be dried up so that no eggs of the mosquitos will have a home and the urines of the animals can’t touch the skin of the people and from there, this will lessen the people who are affected by these diseases.
These are just few of the ways we can avoid these viruses, simple it may seem but the maintenance is what we cannot guarantee.
Living a safe, clean and good life can be achievable if the people will start it at their homes first. These ways may not fully wash away all these diseases but it may lessen its detrimental effects.
Sources:
http://watereverafter.blogspot.com/2012/01/common-water-borne-diseases-in_8519.html
http://www.indexmundi.com/philippines/major_infectious_diseases.html
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