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Dirty water scam linked to Syria’s deadly cholera outbreak

A Syrian woman fills a container with water at the Sahlah al-Banat camp in the countryside of Raqa, in northern Syria - AFP
A Syrian woman fills a container with water at the Sahlah al-Banat camp in the countryside of Raqa, in northern Syria - AFP

An escalating cholera outbreak in Syria has been caused by private companies selling untreated water to desperate communities, according to the International Rescue Committee.

In the last three weeks, roughly 6,000 people have caught the disease and at least 36 have died in northern Syria, in an outbreak that shows few signs of slowing down.

Cholera – a highly contagious bacterial disease – causes severe diarrhoea and vomiting which, if left untreated, can result in death. It is caught by drinking water contaminated by faeces or by eating food grown or prepared with contaminated water.

The outbreak has been linked to raw sewage in the Euphrates River, which runs 1,740 miles across Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and is said to have once flowed through the biblical Garden of Eden. Across the three countries, it supports over 60 million people.

While some people drink water directly from the river, a dirty water scam – where unregulated water trucks claim to sell clean water – is the primary cause of the outbreak, according to the IRC.

“These trucks are going to the Euphrates River and they’re collecting water, but they’re not treating it. And then they’re selling it to communities who just don’t have the water they need to survive,” said Jennifer Higgins, coordinator of policy and advocacy for IRC Syria, told the Telegraph.

A woman carries her child, who is suspected of being infected with cholera, at a hospital in the Kurdish-controlled city of Hasaka, northeastern Syria September 24 - REUTERS
A woman carries her child, who is suspected of being infected with cholera, at a hospital in the Kurdish-controlled city of Hasaka, northeastern Syria September 24 - REUTERS
Syrians carry cleaning products distributed by a non-profit organisation at a camp for internally displaced people as part of a campaign to stem the outbreak - AFP
Syrians carry cleaning products distributed by a non-profit organisation at a camp for internally displaced people as part of a campaign to stem the outbreak - AFP

The devastation wrought by the 11-year Syrian conflict has left the country particularly vulnerable to cholera, as critical infrastructure has been destroyed. Nearly two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of pumping stations and one-third of water towers have been damaged by more than a decade of war, according to the United Nations.

“There’s a huge gap of access to drinking water for Syrians, they have 40 per cent less drinking water than they had a decade ago. That’s pushing a lot of families to buy water from these private companies, and that’s where this outbreak has come from,” Ms Higgins said.

“[The communities] need to buy water to survive… it can cost up to $10-20 a month for this unsafe water,” she added.

Hospital director Tarek Alaeddine, who manages Al-Kasrah hospital in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor Delil, also told AFP that these unregulated trucks are to blame. “The patients were all drinking water delivered by trucks that extract it directly from the Euphrates River, without filtering or sterilisation,” Mr Alaeddine said.

The majority of cases have been reported from Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor and Al-Hasakeh governorates, and 35 per cent of the cases are in children under the age of 10.

Comparisons are being drawn with Haiti’s 2010 cholera outbreak, which killed almost 10,000 people. Haiti’s cholera outbreak came just 10 months after the devastating earthquake which destroyed much of the nation’s infrastructure and left 1.5 million people homeless.

he Euphrates River - AFP
he Euphrates River - AFP

In Syria, it is feared that cases will continue to climb rapidly across the fractured nation over the next few weeks, with cases reported in both government- and rebel-controlled regions.

“I suspect there is a bit of underreporting because capacity is low,” Ms Higgins said. “This cholera outbreak is really just another layer on top of this crisis we’re having in Syria. We’re seeing a decrease in funding from governments like the UK… but Syria cannot be forgotten.”

The country is also ill-equipped to respond. The World Health Organization has reported that 55 per cent of healthcare facilities in Syria are not functioning because of the war, which has killed some 350,000 people since it spiralled out of an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011.

“The health system, after over a decade of conflict, is really very fragile,” said Ms Higgins, who added that 12.2 million people are in need of basic health support, approximately 70 per cent of the total population.

Meanwhile, an estimated seven million Syrians have been internally displaced and are dependent on humanitarian aid, with many living in makeshift camps without sufficient sanitation or sewage.

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