World Watch: In Iraq, battling cholera
The summer heat has set in, the electricity is still in flux, and now, add to a long list of complaints by Iraqis the outbreak of cholera.
Residents in impoverished and overcrowded neighborhoods have reported scores of cases of cholera this summer. Iraqi health specialists warn that dirty water may soon lead to an epidemic. The United States has allocated $2.2 billion to water reconstruction and rehabilitation projects in order to provide more Iraqis with potable drinking water, but the corroded infrastructure of treatment plants and unrelenting insurgent attacks and saboteurs have made progress slow and costly.
"The biggest challenge is the poor condition of Iraq's water system and the infrastructure supporting it," says a U.S. government spokesman in Baghdad. "The previous regime failed to fund and supervise the operation and management of the water and sanitation plants, which has led them to deteriorate quickly in an alarming state of disrepair and inoperability."
It's not an uncommon site in Iraq's large and small cities to see children playing in stagnant puddles of brown, mucky water. According to statistics from USAID, the U.S. development agency that is running many of Iraq's reconstruction projects, more than half of the country's sewage treatment facilities are not working. U.S. officials in Baghdad say that there is progress being made, such as a water project in Baghdad that is delivering 50 million additional gallons per day of potable water to Baghdad residents. But the Iraqi Ministry of Health says that there has been an increase in disease caused by dirty water.
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