New Delhi – Access to clean drinking water remains one of the biggest challenges in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, with hundreds of wells contaminated in most townships in Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, Paris-based Medicines Sans Frontieres (MSF) said.
MSF or Doctors Without Borders said clean drinking water was urgently required to prevent outbreak of diseases among the cyclone survivors.
Juli Niebuhr, the MSF spokesperson in Burma told Mizzima that almost all the wells in every village they had examined were contaminated.
Niebuhr said the MSF have helped villagers clean several wells, with an average of more then 300 wells in some townships.
"At the moment it is the rainy season, so people would be able to collect rain water for drinking purposes, but when the rain stops, people would need to have water supply," Juli Niebuhr, MSF spokesperson in Burma said.
The group said, as a preventive step against an outbreak of diseases, it has also begun to set-up two water treatment units in the delta, which was worst hit by the cyclone, which left 138,000 dead and thousands missing.
"We have not finished supplying water for all the villages yet, and we are continuing to clean wells," Niebuhr, who is also the Deputy Country Manager of MSF in Burma, said.
MSF has said there is a possibility of malaria, dengue and diaorrhea occurring among cyclone survivors in many areas in the delta region but they have not seen any outbreak so far.
"If people have clean water source, it will definitely help prevent an outbreak of diseases," Niebuhr added.
Meanwhile, other aid groups including a Christian Non-Governmental Organization, Church World Service (CWS) and International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC), have also begun to help survivors receive clean drinking water.
Jan Dragin spokesperson of CWS in the United States said their group has started supplying water baskets in order to help cyclone survivors collect rain water and filter it for drinking.
She added that CWS has distributed 3,944 water baskets along with sanitation chemicals and each water container can store clean drinking water for 250 people per day.
She said, there were still a lot of people who needed clean drinking water and they were continuing to provide more materials but the group was currently focussing on restoration of farmlands that would enable farmers to begin planting rice on time.
Zach Abraham, spokesman of the International Federation of Red Cross in Geneva said, his organization had also begun to provide the cyclone survivors with water purification units, which purify drinking water.
Abraham said the IFRC water units have been producing a million litres of clean drinking water every day.
"We are producing over a million litres of clean drinking water everyday and reaching roughly 600,000 people in the delta region," Abraham said.
Besides, the IFRC said it was also conducting trainings for local staff in handling water sanitation units.
"We have water units in Laputta, Bogale and in Mawlamyinegyun," Abraham added.
Despite efforts by international aid groups to help survivors find clean drinking water, the MSF said the need for more clean water is still huge and the current pace of purifying water could fall short once the rainy season was over.
