Arsenic mitigation in Bangladesh - Progress of the UNICEF-DPHE Arsenic - Mitigation project 2002

In Bangladesh, the magnitude of the task and the consequent dimension of the effort needed to mitigate the problem have both being growing rapidly as the level of understanding increases. The UNICEF-DPHE Project of arsenic measurement and mitigation has developed in four phases so far, with 10% of the nation's upazilas (sub districts) being allocated to the Project, most of these being in the known "hot spot" areas. The 1st phase was the national random survey. The 2nd phase was the Five Upazila Action Research Project. The 3rd phase was an additional 15 upazila expansion and the 4th phase, a further 25 upazilas, will be implemented in 2002 making a blanket tube well testing project area of 45 of the "hot spot" upazilas. In addition to this, UNICEF and DPHE have completed plans to carry out a rapid survey in the 200 upazilas, which are not yet allocated to any Project and this work has begun in the second half of 2002. This means that the UNICEF-DPHE Project is testing in almost half of the country and this work will be completed by the end of 2002. Working in partnership with government and NGOs, over 450,000 tube wells have already been tested by the UNICEF-DPHE Project. In 2002, it is estimated that an additional 650,000 wells will be tested making a total of over 1,100,000. Surprisingly, preliminary analysis of testing data indicates that approximately 50% of the contaminated handpumps have actually only been installed for less than 5 years. This work has discovered hundreds of villages and schools that have no safe source at all. More than 2700 new arsenicosis patients have been diagnosed in the 3rd phase upazilas, equating to a prevalence rate of 0.92/1000 for those people using contaminated wells. Extrapolated for the total 45 upazila Project area this would be approximately 8000 people with arsenicosis. In addition to the testing programme, the Project must simultaneously divert some resources and ingenuity to helping people to obtain a safe water source.