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Health conditions improve?

NSS report corroborates IIT research on drinking water, sanitation and
hygiene, reports tehelka bureau
A are organisms that are found in the of acute diarrhea 2.69 per cent per year
report released by the
for the last three decades. Since 2014,
National Statistical Office
environment and the faeces of warm-
when the mission was launched, the
blooded animals; their presence is
(NSO), Ministry of Statistics
used as a proxy for pathogens in water
and Programme Imple-
average pace of this change increased
mentation on November
23, 2019 on the basis of a survey on samples. drastically to 6.02 per cent and 7.96
per cent per year respectively. The re-
The progress, however, is not uni-
Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene form across regions. Of the 7,010 blocks searchers, however, saw that in the
and Housing Condition has almost that were covered in the study, nearly group of blocks that showed minimal
corroborated a study by Indian Insti- 43 per cent or 3,000 blocks showed improvement during the study period,
tute of Technology, Kharagpur earlier over 90 per cent reduction in faecal the improvement in the economic
this year. The IIT Kharagpur study had coliform during the study period. It de- condition and access to sanitation did
observed that rising income and im- creased by 70-90 per cent in nearly 23 not have strong correlation with better
proved access to sanitation facilities per cent of the regions, and 50-70 per health outcomes.
has led to a decrease in disease-causing cent in 7.1 per cent of the study regions. The survey conducted by National
bacteria that cause acute diarrhea in In 24 per cent of the blocks studied, Statistical Office was done to collect
groundwater. the faecal coliform concentration in information on facilities of drinking
On October 2, 2019, Prime Minister groundwater went down by less than water, sanitation along with housing fa-
Narendra Modi declared India to be 50 per cent. cilities available to the households and
open defecation free with toilet cov- The study clearly shows a relation the microenvironment surrounding
erage increasing from 38.7 per cent in between the Prime Minister’s Swacch the houses, which are important de-
2014 to 100 per cent in 2019. The study, Bharat Mission and improvement in terminants of overall quality of living
published in a Nature group of journals, water quality and health. condition of the people.
Scientific Reports that the concentra- Analysis of the data shows that the The survey was spread across the
tion of faecal coliform in groundwater rate of decrease in faecal coliform con- country and for the central sample,
had reduced by 38.5 per cent. Coliform centrations was 3.09 per cent and that data were collected from 1,06,838
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