Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers helps Free State cholera patients
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Aisha, a water director at Freder fort, discusses the loss of family members in a housing situation due to a housing crisis. The department of Water and Sanitation is working to issue boil water notice advisories in municipalities where the water quality is at high risk of cholera outbreak. The challenges of maintaining safe water quality and the potential for pathogens to affect safety are discussed, with a need for urgency in issuing these notices. The speakers emphasize the need for more water tankers and the difficulty of finding the right quality for a supply system.
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Thanks for staying with us. Let's continue now a look at some of the
water issues, and we speak to gift of the givers. Founder, Doctor
Imtiaz, Sudirman and ha AHL water director, Aisha la her who join us
both now. Thank you so much for time this afternoon. Doctor soda,
I'm going to begin with you. You now were assisting in the area as
gift of the givers at Freder fort. Give us a sense of how the
situation is on the ground.
Good evening, it's the we got the history, even it was sad from the
time we got the yesterday afternoon, when we got the
message, we were told that, you know, there's a crisis of pallava
just picked up earlier, but there were no deaths yesterday. We were
told that there were three deaths. So anyway, they went to the family
that were affected. And all they get to from the same family, the
grandmother, the mother and aunt. And when my teams went into the
house, you know, it was a very poor situation. And there was a
teenage girl and young siblings, they were the only members of the
family left. They were traumatized, you know, they were
affected. They didn't have enough material supplies, and they said
clearly, then all the three family members at Daria, they had cramps,
they went to the hospital and they died. It says the same message for
all three. And from area, started talking and said, Look, there is a
water crisis here. We do need water. But it was late last night,
so we couldn't do much by the time we finished off in that house. But
today, wherever they went, you know, but to the current of the
municipality and the local councilors, they arranged one
place for everybody to come, and everybody wanted water, which
tells me there's a serious problem in the area, and a serious one.
Are they getting any help at all? Those two siblings?
Well, we're going to look into that. Nobody. They will need
support. It's similar to what happened in Hamas. 23 families
lost family members. We support those families, but funeral and
additional supplies for them, biscuits definitely are going to
need support. And you know, we'll come back to support them, because
when we went in, initially, it was just water and hygiene items. And
of course, we hydration solution for the people itself with the
next we didn't know. We're not sure what to expect until we get
there ourselves. The problem is we caught what multiple what
interventions. It's not only federal for in Makanda, which is
an equal life problem. Every day we're developing water for Fort,
mofot, Adelaide and other areas around because there is just not
enough water. So our water tanks have been working since 2020
and now we've got an additional crisis of more water challenges,
but this time it's infected water. You just don't know water, it's
infected water, which is making the situation more complex. Yeah,
different areas,
especially. And I'm going to come back to that in just a moment,
because, I mean, you listen to the Department of Water and
Sanitation, for example, saying that there's been a decline in the
country's water quality. And this, of course, is in the latest
report. And Aisha, I wondered, then, in the face of this, you
know, the contaminated water, as we are seeing in some of the
municipalities, as well as this cholera outbreak, what needs to be
done to make sure that the situation is brought under
control. Now,
hello bongiwe, and to the listeners as well. Thanks for this
opportunity to respond. I think the most important thing is that
the reports have been published by the Minister, by the Department of
Water and Sanitation, the very comprehensive reports, if you look
at the blue drop white report, it clearly says the treatment plants
that were assessed where the water quality is not good. So what is
needed is urgent interventions in those municipalities to ensure
safe water is delivered. So what can we do? People need to
understand where that is. The department needs to react
immediately to go out and issue boil water notices in those
municipalities where the water is at high risk. I think it's
important that people understand when the boil water notices issued
that they do not consume the dip water, because it does present a
serious health risk. It may not be cholera, but equalizes equally a
health risk as well. So the boil water notices must be issued where
the water quality is not safe. So listening to you, then, Aisha and
what the department had to say that, you know, in some of these
municipalities, you're looking at a failure because there's
instability, and they're not then testing the water as often as they
should. So the Department of Water and Sanitation should not be
waiting to be invited. It should actually be going into these
municipalities just to get a sense of the situation and to assist.
Remember the what she would already reports on certain systems
that were assessed, but the monthly results, the result that
the department gets, already tells them what the quality of the water
is. If it is a failure, it is a failure. So we already know where
the failures are. If there is no monitoring, then the potential for
contamination is there because there is no monitoring to verify
the safety. So the department already knows exactly which supply
system does not have monitoring
information, or whether where the monitoring information shows that
the water is not safe. So it's not that you have to go and
investigate which one it is. We already know which ones they are.
I think that oil water notices are.
Critical, because now we're not only talking about E coli, we're
talking about potential for cholera as well that can enter the
supply system because there's insufficient disinfection. So I
think we need to have a sense of urgency in issuing these water
notices advisories to communities. Dr cinnamon, you are on the
ground. Your team is there working, as you've said, in
various areas across the country, are these boiled water notices out
there?
No, we haven't seen any boiled water notices because we're
providing the water. So nobody's boiling water because we provide
the water. We're providing water tankers. We have brought in
additional water tankers. And you know, our teams work Monday to
Sunday, so up till now, and of course, the load sharing is not
going to be easy to keep boiling water. Keep boiling water. It's a
challenge. You know, of course, you can boil the water early, let
it fall and then pick it up later. That's practical, yes, but because
we're providing the water tankers. And of course, we've drilled
boreholes in the last three years. We've drilled 540 volts in many
parts of the country. We do have challenges in some of the
boreholes where the water quality where there is some E coli or this
chemical metals, which we have to then remove from the water. And
that's a very expensive business. Some of some of those plants have
cost us a million Rand each to purify the water, and some are
300,000 Rand, some 50,000 Rand. So every additional chip and job
besides maintaining the borehole, you got to put in filtration
plants and maintain that. But after now, look, we've been doing
well. There are many areas that require more in addition to what
Aisha I said, I would say while putting up a whole oil, notice
boiling water, notice we may have to drill more holes in more areas
to make it more accessible quickly to people. We've seen the success
of the poles. We've seen how they work. 21 in one area, 12 in
another area, 45 in another area. And it's not solving the problem,
but it's easing the situation of the people to a large extent.
Aisha, there's something that you know. Just two days ago, we were
talking to some viewers who were giving us a sense of the water
quality in their towns and how things are looking there. A number
of them are saying that their water appears to be brown and they
don't know it looks like it's got sand, but they don't know what's
going on. Are you able to tell them, if they're watching what's
happening there?
Look, it's great. I forgot to look at water and decide what the
quality is. Water can have sand even stop free of pathogens. Water
can be absolutely clear and have pathogens. So you cannot evaluate
the safety of your water just by looking at it. If it smells funny,
yeah, I would be suspicious of that, but you cannot smell
pathogens as well. So the color of the water alone does not give you
any indication. But we as human beings, obviously, if we see dirty
water, we don't want to drink it, because we believe that it's not
galatical, and that is a good thing to go go by, because that
means whatever has happened upstream has ensured that there is
sand in the water which could have contaminants associated with it.
So yes, it could be an indication that the water is not safe, but
not necessarily interesting. Very interesting point there Aisha, and
you know, one doesn't even think about something along those lines,
because as soon as you say someone sees brown water, they think
definitely unsafe. But let me thank you both for your time, and
let's continue then to monitor this particular situation. And I
do appreciate your time this afternoon. That was Doctor Imtiaz
Suleiman, founder of the gift of the givers, as well as AHL water
director Aisha Lahey.