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Papua New Guinea’s battle against a rising rate of Covid-19 infections is being hampered by the most basic shortage: access to clean water, public health experts have warned..
The number of cases has risen from just 11 cases two months ago to 424 on Friday, with four deaths. And efforts to contain the increase in the number of cases across the archipelago and to prevent outbreaks in the Pacific region are stalling because thousands of people are unable to access safe water to wash their hands and clean themselves, says the key development agency. region of.
“The latest statistics indicate that 55% of people in the Pacific have access to basic drinking water … the lowest in the world,” said David Hebblethwaite, leader in water security and governance in the Pacific Community. “In terms of access to sanitation, we have slipped just below sub-Saharan Africa … this is clearly a health problem related to hygiene and hand washing.”
After an initial outbreak in the capital Port Moresby, with cases targeting healthcare workers at the country’s largest hospital, infections have now been detected in PNG, including in rural provinces such as the Southern Highlands, Morobe, and La autonomous region of Bougainville. The actual infection rate is likely to be many times the official figure: fewer than 16,000 tests have been conducted across the country since the pandemic began.
The PNG outbreak is a small fraction of the more than 24 million coronavirus infections worldwide, but the risk lies in the fragile ability of Pacific island nations to control rapid infection through vulnerable communities.
Many rural residents of the Morobe province, in the northeast of the country, do not have a water source near their communities. In the village of Intoap in Morobe’s Markham Valley, Maria Linibi tells The Guardian that access to water during the pandemic, when having clean water was even more vital, was an even bigger struggle.
“Rural women would like to have access to water and sanitation to be able to protect themselves and their families from Covid-19, but this is very difficult because the movement of people is restricted and so is transportation,” she said. “We can’t go looking for him.
“The water haulage is done by women. Some have to carry a 20-liter container of water on their back a long way from the village to the stream or the well and vice versa, and they usually also carry their children so they can help with transportation. “
World Vision PNG National Director Heather MacLeod says that without access to clean water “our people cannot wash their hands and protect themselves against the spread of Covid-19 and other diseases.”
“The end result would be a large-scale spread of the disease.”
It is somewhat paradoxical that the Pacific island countries, scattered across the vast “Blue Continent,” which is 165 million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean, struggle to find enough water to drink and stay healthy.
Small and low island countries, such as Nauru, Kiribati and Tuvalu, have limited surface reserves of fresh water and depend on rainwater, which can be affected by droughts and desalination of seawater.
PNG, by contrast, receives more than 3,000mm of rainfall a year, but the country’s infrastructure for storing and distributing safe treated water is underdeveloped.
Efforts to improve piped water supplies in sprawling informal settlements in towns and cities, and ensure water security in rural villages separated by long distances and arduous terrain, have not kept pace with population growth.
Here, residents often fend for themselves, collecting water from underground wells prone to contamination by human and man-made waste, or capturing rain.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, waterborne illnesses and related illnesses such as diarrhea, cholera, and malaria were already endemic throughout the Pacific.
Children are especially vulnerable: diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death for children under five in PNG and the Solomon Islands.
The survival rate of young children has increased in recent decades, but the mortality rate for children under the age of five in Papua New Guinea remains approximately 47.8 per 1,000 births, above the world average of 39.
One of the most neglected diseases in the Pacific is childhood stunting, says Hebblethwaite. Poor physical growth and development in children is often due to malnutrition and repeated infections, such as diarrhea, and there has been little progress in reducing their rate. “Access to clean water and hygiene in the communities is a key factor,” he said.
Already fragile, water security in the Pacific will be further weakened by the impacts of climate change, and rainfall forecasts will be less reliable for decades to come.
Chalapan Kaluwin, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Papua New Guinea, says that “climate change, variability, rising sea levels and warming of the oceans with temperatures above 4 ℃ will influence the quality of fresh water and the water resources of all the Pacific island countries ”.
A severe drought during an El Niño weather pattern in 2015 and 2016 led to life-threatening food and water shortages in PNG.
Cyclones and storm surges can also damage rainwater tanks and render freshwater supplies useless in rural and coastal areas.
While expanding water coverage will require more investment, Hebblethwaite argues that there is also room to better manage existing resources.
Desalination plants throughout the region have either failed or deteriorated, while more robust water tanks will better withstand extreme weather.
“And there is a lot that communities can do to make the most of what they already have,” he said. “There are ways to collect more groundwater and there are simple rainwater harvesting techniques.”
