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Illegal wells pose health hazards for slum dwellers in Mumbai

Children could especially be affected by diarrhoea due to pathogens that get mingled with groundwater from the several sewage pipes running below the colony at Shivaji Nagar in suburban Govandi.

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Following the civic body's drive to snap all illegal tap water connections and booster pipes due to water shortage in the city, desperate slum families in Northeast Mumbai are now digging wells to tap the ground water, which is allegedly contaminated with sewage residues.

According to health officials of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and researchers in Haffkine Institute, such activities pose potential threat to people's health and especially, children.

Children could be affected by diarrhoea and dysentry due to pathogens that may get mingled with the groundwater from the several sewage pipes that are running below the colony at Shivaji Nagar in suburban Govandi, they said.

Chances of Hepatitis A, B and C are possible, they said.

MCGM officials also said besides, that area is also a solid waste dumping ground, so by digging the illegal ground water wells, there are chances of ground water getting contaminated with other pathogens also.

Asked whether there could be polio virus in the water, a senior Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) officer said, theoretically it is possible.

"ICMR's Enterovius Research Institute is doing doing the surveillance of sewage water in Mumbai for the last 15 years, and this is the first year (2009) in which during the last 51 weeks, we have not got any wild polio viruses," its director Dr JM Deshpande said.

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