In most of Bangladesh, arsenic contaminates the drinking water. Excessive amounts of arsenic in the water lead to serious health problems, including skin lesions and internal cancers.
In response to the health crisis arsenic poisoning creates, SIM established the Arsenic Awareness and Alleviation Project. This programme provides education and training surrounding the dangers of arsenic contamination through literature distribution and small group instruction. Through this project, SIM researches the latest appropriate means of providing arsenic removal for individual household wells and advertises these in the affected areas. This project assists the government and other agencies in implementing remedial solutions for the arsenic contamination in our target areas.
The ongoing arsenic-related SIM development work of the past fiscal year met the numerical goals established with the Bangladesh government. The first goal was to raise public awareness of the dangers posed by high arsenic levels in the drinking water. We conducted informational meetings in a variety of public formats. We taught at schools, community centres, tea shops, household meetings and a variety of other localities. We exceeded our goal of 65 meetings by conducting 99 meetings attended by around 1,900 people.
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Our second goal was to provide remedial solutions for households that drink arsenic-contaminated water. We are fortunate that in our city there is a high quality filter produced locally that can reliably remove arsenic. The filter is called a SONO Filter and it costs about £20. The filter can daily produce 150 litres of water, which more than meets drinking and cooking needs. The filter is a stand-alone unit, gravity-fed, and can be placed in the kitchen or other appropriate area. We sell the filter at a subsidised rate of about £5.
Our goal last year was to provide 100 filters, and we ended up providing 130 filters that benefited about 1,300 users.
