COVID-19 and Unsafe Water: A Tale of Two Enemies

Sachin Tendulkar—the Michael Jordan of the game of cricket and an icon in every household in India—unexpectedly flashes up on the TV screen for an advertisement sponsored by the Indian Health Ministry. He is giving a lesson but that has nothing to do with honing strokes with a cricket bat. It is all about how to clean hands with soap using running water to get rid of every trace of sneaky and mean-spirited COVID-19 virus. Steps are detailed. The entire hand cleaning process would take about 30 s and it consumes about 2.0 L of water. For an average person, cleaning is recommended five times every day, that is, 10 L of daily supply of clean water that should be free of germs, bacteria, and any toxic chemical. The goal of the TV announcement slot is to develop awareness to prevent COVID-19 infection. Later in the evening, I saw on TV another demonstration of hand washing from Bollywood's superstar Amitabh Bachchan, our very familiar Big B with nearly similar content.

The intent of the public health message is unarguably beneficial but the question that springs instantly is: Who are the target audience for the advertisement delineating the stepwise tutorial of hand washing? Hardly one third of India's population enjoys access to running water and that privilege is confined mostly among relatively affluent people in large metropolises and other urban populations. Next one third of the population has access to clean water but only intermittently and the quality is not guaranteed. Aside those, well >250 million people in India lack access to clean water, let alone running safe water within the household. The technique of cleaning hands with soap and running water is truly a luxury well beyond their reach now and in the foreseeable future. Would not it have been nice if Tendulkar or Big B had said something or concocted an alternate technique, recognizing the plight of the millions of water-deprived individuals in India? Or a more global question: Do we really know our own next door people sharing the same planet?

From a life-threatening viewpoint, both COVID-19 and water have a lot in common. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every day—repeat every 24 h—about 6–10,000 people die from waterborne diseases. Just to put some perspective about the numbers, more people died from unsafe water worldwide during just the last two weeks of March than all the deaths combined that were inflicted by COVID-19 worldwide since its outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019. Why is then no public fuss, no sign of alarm, and no mounting scare from unsafe water with such a high and consistent killing rate?

The answer is simple: It is the blessing (or curse) of the free market economy. Water market is governed by the principle of free market economy; the rich and powerful can buy safe water at elevated prices, posing no health-related threat. Water-related fatalities are only limited to the resource-poor people who do not afford to pay the market rate of safe water and, therefore, literally perish globally. Supply chain of safe water does not extend to communities and neighborhoods that lack purchase power. In contrast, COVID-19 is an all-out ruthless evil that does not spare anyone in its path, rich and powerful included and it defies the basic principle of free market economy. One cannot buy mercy or special treatment from COVID-19 at a higher price. In a cruel way, COVID-19 is an equalizer; it does not discriminate between rich and poor. Unlike water, COVID-19 infects and wounds every human on its path. It did not spare the British prince, British prime minister, Hollywood film stars, star athletes, and professional players. No special escape route exists for the elite to combat COVID-19.

World Water Day on 22nd March came and flew by nearly unnoticed under the ominous cloud of COVID-19. The World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness about the grave disparity in the world where ∼2.5 billion people lack access to safe water. In the South and Southeast Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, ∼200 million resource-poor people are threatened by natural arsenic contamination of ground water but ready-to-apply technology exists to mitigate the situation (German et al., 2019). Now we are amid an existential threat worldwide from COVID-19, and we consciously skipped any event or celebration this year.

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Figure 1.

This girl's family of five in a village near the India/Bangladesh border receives 25 liters of safe water daily for cooking and drinking. The groundwater (colored bottle) is contaminated with arsenic and iron.

We all aspire that human ingenuity will rise to the occasion and there would soon be a vaccine or some kind of a counter to stop the onslaught of COVID-19. That is the need of the hour. If and when that mission is accomplished, we should not forget that study after study has shown that lack of access to quality water drives inequality and perpetuates the cycle of poverty, which in turn pulls down the entire nation and the world too. It will then be so wonderful to watch Tendulkar or Big B on TV screen advocating the importance of safe water and means to enhance its access for a healthy and equitable India with the same passion and urgency. In the meanwhile, the poor and the unfortunate have to somehow survive the wrath of COVID-19 even without access to clean water.