Better health, one drop at a time!

 
Through my previous blogs, I have tried to bring together diverse issues/topics that I think effect the overall health of an individual. For those of you reading through my blogs, my intention was to drift away from the 'expert' image of a nutritionist and lean more towards looking at issues from a community perspective. In other words, my view is that if we closely examine our surrounding environment we are likely to find the underlying problems (to adverse health) and hopefully solutions so as to prevent these factors from adding up. Be it learning to accept our body image and becoming comfortable with it to recognizing laughter as a way of preventative medicine. There are so many ways of improving our quality of life just by means of improving our built environment, taking small steps towards social change and so on. I hope I was successful in conveying that point.

In this blog I want to shift my focus towards the importance of clean water as a major determinant of health. Having talked about the methods of purifying water in microbiology class got me thinking about the importance of clean and safe water in health so when I came across an article on CNN regarding a UN report on foul water, I simply had to blog about it!

For most of us blessed enough to be living in Canada this is not a major problem (except for few unfortunate incidents in the past, Walkerton anyone?). However, a recent United Nations report called polluted and contaminated water as a greater killer than all forms of violence. Water is essential in growing crops, feeding animals, cleaning and ofcourse drinking as well.

But with the recent globalization and industrialization, our waters have become polluted with all kinds of waste coming from factories, farms, sewage, agriculture and other wastes. 90% of wastewater discharged in developing countries is untreated leading to as many as 2.2 million deaths which surpasses war victims. However, these deaths can be drastically reduced with proper management which is an example of an opportunity where a great challenge can be turned into an opportunity. No doubt, this would require millions of dollars worth of investment but if we look at it in the long run, the benefits outweigh the costs.