In Kyrgyzstan, the hidden cost of water

KYRGYZSTAN HAS A WATER PROBLEM. AND IT’S MAKING ITS CITIZENS SICK.

Kyrgyzstan has rivers, glaciers (covering 4.2 percent of land), and lakes (covering 3.5 percent). But like its water-poor neighbors in Central-Asia, the country suffers from Soviet-era water mismanagement and systems that have fallen into disrepair.

Across Kyrgyzstan, lack of access to clean drinking water presents a serious health problem in hundreds of villages. Each year, officials record 30,000 acute intestinal infections, 24% related to parasites. Up to 86% of typhoid cases occur in villages that lack safe drinking water.

The Leilek District in the Southeast, near the disputed borders of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is one of the worst affected areas.

In the district’s Beshkent village, where modern water treatment plants and plumbing systems don’t yet exist, 12,000 people depend on water delivered by open irrigation channels called aryk. The aryk water is vulnerable to contamination from animals, debris and trash.

At the medical point in Beshkent, head physician Abid Madaliev sees numerous cases of hepatitis, gastrointestinal infection -- double the national average-- and brucellosis. The latter, a joint-disease that is transmitted from livestock to humans through contaminated water, can lead to disabilities if not caught in time.

Madaliev says that although vaccines are given to newborns, he sees about 20 case of hepatitis per month. Villagers young and old visit the hospital for infectious diseases with symptoms of vomiting, weakness, lack of appetite, pain in liver and headaches.

"[Waterborne disease] are especially acute in autumn, when leaves falling in the aryk leads to the growth of bacteria.”

150,000 people in 390 villages in Kyrgyzstan depend solely on aryks for drinking water because water supply systems are either nonfunctional or nonexistent. At schools and homes, water is brought in by bucket and boiled to remove the most dangerous bacteria. Even the hospitals must boil the water they use in their facility.

Anabar Nosirova, a kitchen worker at a Bashkent school, gathers 80-100 liters every afternoon – carrying 20 liters in 2 buckets each trip - and then goes through a complicated process to make it drinkable.

She filters the water through cheese cloth, letting it sit overnight so the dust settles to the bottom. The next day, she boils the water before making tea for the students. Many families don’t always go through this process at home, so many children miss school due to illness.

The risks are bigger than just drinking the water. Local bakeries use aryk water in their bread, and livestock like sheep drink the water, which affects their meat. Even just playing in the water can lead to contamination.

In Leilek and many other rural communities, Soviet-era plumbing projects have fallen into disrepair from little maintenance. But even functioning plumbing would still be carrying the water that is heavy with bacteria. A water treatment plant is necessary to combat hepatitis and other water-borne diseases.

"If we had a central system and a treatment plant, we could use chlorine to clean the water and the number of sick people would definitely decline," explained Dr. Madaliev.

To solve this problem, the biggest issue communities face is the initial funding, explains Vladimir Grebnev, Programme Coordinator for Environment Protection for Sustainable Development at UNDP Kyrgyzstan.

Kanybek Alimbekov (pictured above), a Beshkent politician and hydro-engineer, has taken on the project of trying to bring clean water to five adjacent villages. He and his team were hoping to get a partnership from ARIS, a local NGO that partners with the Krygyzstan government, but they must raise the seed money.

Over the past decade, the village government raised $12,000 (or 5% of planned cost) towards the installation of a 20 kilometer pipeline and a water treatment facility. But in the meantime, costs have increased, and the project has stalled.

“In a village with a population of 5000, water infrastructure may cost at least $200,000,” explains Grebnev.

Meanwhile, UNDP is trying to change local behaviors of the villagers around water usage. Their parents and grandparents also used aryks for drinking water, but the water was cleaner then and now quality is riskier.

Zarina Otrur Kyzy, the mother of a nine-month-old baby girl in the hospital, sees it as an issue for the future of the country.

"It would be so good if the government gave us clean water for the next generations."