Hundreds of people have been poisoned by contaminated water in the Sansaft village in the Menoufiya governorate, writes Mohamed Abdel-Baky Over the last week, Nadia Mustafa, 33, has been waiting every day for hours in the village of Sansaft in the Menoufiya governorate to get her family clean drinking water, following the shutdown of water-treatment plants after hundreds of people were poisoned as a result of drinking contaminated water. Nadia's husband and elder son Omar are in hospital for a second week after being diagnosed with water poisoning. At a press conference held on Monday, Minister of Health Mohamed Hamed said that laboratory tests have shown that the village's water sources had been contaminated with Salmonella and E coli microbes and had not been properly treated with chlorine. Tests had also shown that the underground pump network had been infected with different kinds of microbes and needed to be disinfected by specialised technicians as soon as possible. "The pump network that supplies the village houses with water should have been built lower down. As it is, the pumps are only a few metres underground, meaning that there has been a risk of drinking water being mixed with sewage water," he said. He added that out of the 278 victims, only 79 were still receiving treatment. Media reports had said that more than 4,200 villagers had entered local hospitals due to water poisoning, most of them leaving on the same day after receiving antibiotics. Hamed said that the public prosecutor in Menoufiya was investigating responsibility for the outbreak. The investigation would include the workers operating the water plants in the village and officials in the governorate, he said. On 20 August hundreds of residents of the village were hospitalised after drinking the polluted water, suffering from vomiting, a high temperature and diarrhea. The crisis escalated after thousands of angry villagers surrounded the Monof City hospital building and held the health minister and Menoufiya Governor Ashraf Hilal hostage for 45 minutes before they were released by the police. In order to contain the crisis, the government shut down all water sources feeding the village last week, providing it instead with water brought in by vehicles from outside and promising to establish a new water supply line from nearby villages by mid-September. On Saturday, Prime Minister Hisham Qandil promised to build a new water plant that would meet village needs by June 2013, the project costing LE7 million. "These decisions were taken after consulting village leaders during a meeting with the Minister of Utilities Abdel-Qawy Khalifa" said Wael Abdine from Sansaft village, who attended the meetings last week. According to Abdine, Sansaft has six sources of water all going through two stations. The government runs one, and the other was donated by one of the rich families in the village and is unlicensed. Islam Abdel-Hakam, new director of the main water station in the village, said that an absence of inspection by the local authorities had led to the crisis. He said that workers at the governmental main station were supposed to carry out laboratory tests on the water every 15 days, but this had not been done for several years. "We have been suffering since 2005 from polluted water. We have tried to complain to the governor many times, but nobody has ever listened to us," said 42-year-old Mahmoud Abdel-Azim, who was being treated in the village hospital. "Is there any hope that you will treat us as human beings? We are not asking for much, only clean water," one old woman among the patients shouted at doctors dispatched from Cairo by the Ministry of Health. According to an expert at the Water Regulatory Agency who has visited the village, tests have shown a high percentage of iron and manganese in the samples, indicating that the drinking water has become mixed with sewage water. He added that the increase of iron and manganese in the water also explained the water's colour. The media has reported cases of water poisoning in other villages in other governorates, including Sharqiya, Assiut, Gharbiya and Daqahliya. However, officials in Sharqiya and Daqahliya have denied such reports. The quality of the drinking water in Egypt has been questioned in recent years. In 2008, Al-Ahram cited a study by the National Toxicology Centre, an affiliate of Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine, which said that half a million Egyptians could be suffering from various degrees of poisoning due to toxic levels of contaminants in drinking water. It said that 5,000 people had died as a result of kidney failure and other diseases caused by polluted water. The study claimed that around 16 billion cubic metres of agricultural and industrial waste was being dumped annually into the Nile. While some have disputed this figure, parliament asking for an investigation in March citing figures from the report, it gives an indication of the possible extent of the problem. Blame has also been apportioned to over-chlorination, antiquated and polluted pipe systems, and the disposal of sewage directly into the Nile. Another report by the National Water Research Centre issued in 2009 indicated that only about one third of the population was connected to proper sewerage. Partly because of this low coverage, some 17,000 children die each year due to water contamination, the report said.
