In Masbate City, typhoid changes habits but not for the poor

MASBATE CITY—After Rosana Cantre’s husband and daughter fell ill because of typhoid fever in September last year, she stopped fetching drinking water from an uphill well and started buying purified water although it meant a cut in the family’s monthly income of P5,000, mostly from his husband’s work in a nearby ice plant.

Twelve other families living on the interconnected stilt houses extending for about 100 meters into the sea in Barangay (village) Kinamaligan of this city had followed suit, as the city government stepped in to combat water-borne diseases in the city burdened by severe shortage of portable water.

“My husband and daughter had vomiting spells and diarrhea,” said Cantre.

They had been fetching drinking water from a well for five years and spending P600 a month for three pails of water each day. Their neighbors had done the same.

Then typhoid fever struck and spread fear in the village. Now, water from the well is used only for cleaning and bathing.

Aside from the seaside Kinamaligan, three other villages in the city proper—Bagumbayan, Bapor and Ibingay—are also having problems with water-borne diseases, said City Councilor Andrei Diez.

The Mobo-Masbate Water District (MMWD) has served the city and the neighboring town of Mobo but is yet to expand its services to the more remote communities of the city, which has 30 villages.

“The problem gets worse in upland villages,” said Diez.

Water-borne diseases come with water scarcity because residents are forced to just get water from wells, which could be contaminated with microbes, due to the absence of an efficient water system.

Diez said there had been an outbreak of typhoid fever in the first three months of 2011. It killed at least five people who had drunk contaminated water.

Most of the victims were residents of Barangay Ibingay.

“Water in Ibingay came from a source that is just under the city proper. The chance that it has microbes is high,” said Diez.

As a preventive measure, he said, the city government ordered MMWD to regularly conduct water tests to ensure that the water it supplies to residents are free from microbes.

A city ordinance was also put in effect immediately after the outbreak last year. It requires water refilling or purifying stations to pass water-quality tests before they are allowed to operate.

The ordinance was welcomed by water traders, said Diez.

The booming water refilling and purifying business has highlighted the water problem of Masbate City. At the same time, it has also eased the scarcity of clean, potable water in the southernmost city of Bicol.

Diez said the grim picture that had been painted about the water supply of Masbate is changing with the help of the local government.

The poor, however, don’t have much of a choice. While others can afford the costs of purified water, they simply had to return to the well that they have been used to and risk being stricken ill.