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Iraq water shortage called major health issue

AMMAN, Jordan — A shortage of safe drinking water in Iraq is threatening to increase diarrhea, a leading killer of children in the country, the United Nations said Thursday.

Violence makes it difficult to protect Iraqi water officials and repair pipes damaged by sabotage. But U.N. officials partly blamed inadequate funding, both for Iraqi water systems and the world body’s own operations.

A lack of money forced UNICEF this month to halt its water tanker service that delivered clean water to tens of thousands of people in Baghdad, a U.N. statement said.

The majority of Iraqi families rely on municipal systems that pipe water into their homes, but many mains are damaged and infested with dangerous waterborne diseases that can cause diarrhea, the second-highest cause of child illness and death in Iraq.

Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF official based in Jordan, said UNICEF’s program to assist Iraq with water, sanitation and hygiene is short $30 million because the agency had assumed Iraqis would not need such assistance by now. Some $2 million would be needed to provide water tanker deliveries for the rest of the year.

“We are still needed because Iraq has not been able to meet the needs of all its people with respect to water,” she told The Associated Press.

The Iraqi government has acknowledged local water systems will not be able to meet the country’s needs for at least 18 more months, the U.N. statement said.

“Investment is not yet at the level where it should be,” Hajaj said, adding that the Ministry for Municipalities and Public Works needed to spend much more.

An official in Iraq’s public works ministry defended its funding level, saying the government had promised to provide $650 million for improving water systems. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen disagreeing with the U.N.

In the U.N. statement, Roger Wright, the UNICEF representative for Iraq, said diarrhea cases have been increasing, calling that a troubling development because the “diarrhea season” doesn’t usually start until June. Hajaj said she could not provide precise figures.

UNICEF said it is stockpiling millions of sachets of oral rehydration salts to prepare for possible diarrhea outbreaks, and the World Health Organization is helping Iraq’s government step up disease surveillance.