Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
in the Yellow River basin the local pharmacies not only sell medicines but
keep a careful record of the names/addresses of the villagers who buy them
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.
Every village had at least one pharmacy, all with competent pharmacists, who
kept detailed daily records of names/addresses of all persons who purchased
pills/drugs, including which kinds were bought and how much. These phar-
macists' records clearly showed that the sale of pills/drugs relating to various
diseases sometimes increased to much higher levels for a period of time, indi-
cating an outbreak of a related disease. However, most of these illnesses were
never reported to the local health offices. The project recommended that these
data could be utilized as a very valuable supplement to the health officer's offi-
cial records on disease morbidities, so the health officers could be on the alert
whenever they notice any marked increase in the use of pills/drugs.
Jordan: Cholera Outbreak
During the author's assignment on a USAID
project in Jordan in 1984
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, the water resources ministry noted that, when a cholera
outbreak had occurred in one of the country's cities, the government responded by
putting the city's sewage treatment plant operator in jail — an indication of their
level of knowledge on enteric disease epidemiology at the time.
Syria: Endemic Cholera at Damascus
A WHO-sponsored project for plan-
ning of sewage treatment at Damascus in 1980 had the target of solving the
existing problem of endemic cholera due to discharge of raw sewage into the
river running through the city which was subsequently used for irrigating veg-
etable crops below the city, with the vegetables (with the cholera virus) then sold
for consumption in the city
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. The study proposed intercepting the raw sewage
discharges on both sides of the river, treating the intercepting flows at a station
below the city, then pumping the treated flow back for return to the river at a
point above the city (to maintain steady river flow).
India: Enteric Cholera at Calcutta
A WHO-sponsored project for improv-
ing water supply waste management, and drainage at Calcutta in the 1960s
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included provision for chlorinating the river water that was used, separately from
the city's drinking water system, for the city's firefighting mains, but this river
water was also used as drinking water by about one million illegal squatters liv-
ing in the city, as the logical and practical step to resolving the endemic cholera
problem. However, after several years of such chlorination, the city council dis-
continued this chlorination with the argument that public health savings applied
mostly to the illegal squatters who were not entitled to this expenditure.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT (EIA)
Difficulties in Application of EIA Process to DCs
The advent of the EIA process in the United States in the late 1960s (called the Envi-
ronmental Impact Statement) was the initial step leading to the UN/Stockholm/1972
