Status of water pollution and incidence of water bourne enteric diseases in Varanasi City
by
Manju Pandey
Department of Zoology, Banaras Hindu University, India

World War II culminated with fast growing industrialization and urbanization in developing countries and of armament race (including neuclear ones) and technical advancement of the developed countries. An unbalanced lop sided resource utilization on earth led to degradation of the environment globally. Same is the present situation of even the water and air quality in our country. The holy Ganges flowing in the most populated Northern India has been declared as unfit even for bathing. The city of Varanasi is on the bank of this river and 50% of the water for consumption of its inhabitants is drawn from it. We try to find if the Ganga Action Plan has been able to control the degrading water quality of Ganges and restore it to WHO Standard. The high value of the multiple correlation of incidence of water bourne enteric diseases in the city with the concentration of the water pollutants in Ganges does not conclude that it is the cause of the enteric diseases. In this paper we ,therefore, try to check if the incidence of disease may be due to some other factors, like surrounding environment, food habits, sanitory and hygienic conditions. From a multivariate analysis of the survey data of the households of patients we try to identify the possible cause.

Date received: November 14, 2000

Copyright © 2000 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cafx-00.