UN alarms over impact of waste water on human health

Unregulated discharge of liquid waste due to policy, technological and infrastructural bottlenecks poses serious threats to human and ecological health, a United Nations (UN) agency warned in a new report.

Only 20 percent of waste water globally is being treated, while rapid industrialization and population explosion has worsened the challenge, according to the Rapid Assessment Report on Waste Water Management launched Wednesday by UN-WATER during a meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The report said that waste water management has been neglected by governments and industries as they rush to commercialize drinking water production, adding that disjointed policies, low technology uptake and poor urban planning have worsened the challenge of unsafe effluent disposal.

Poor waste water management is rife in developing countries that possesses a partly 8 percent capacity to recycle and reuse it for domestic and industrial purposes, and the African continent bears the heaviest burden of poor waste water disposal, the report said.

According to the report, an estimated 547 million people in Sub- Saharan Africa lack access to basic sanitation hence a high toll of communicable diseases and loss to Gross Domestic Production.

The United Nations Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner said that waste water can be converted into a resource through adoption of simple and affordable technology.

"It is high time we turned waste water challenge into an opportunity. Technology has made it possible to reclaim waste water and use it to irrigate 20 to 45 million hectares worldwide," Steiner said. Endi