Five die, 58 sickened after drinking contaminated water in India
Pakistan Times Monitoring Desk

NEW DELHI (India): At least five people died and 58 fell sick after drinking contaminated water drawn from a village pond in the western Indian desert state of Rajasthan, police said Saturday.

The Press Trust of India news agency quoted police as saying that four children and an adult died after drinking water this week from a pond in Maldarkalan village, close to the tourist city of Udaipur in Rajasthan.

The local administrator has sent water samples from the village pond for testing.

A vast majority of people living in rural India lack safe drinking water and cities are also facing chronic shortages, raising serious health concerns, said a study by India's independent Center for Science and Environment (CSE).

Shortage of safe Water

The study suggested that less than 40 percent of India's rural inhabitants have access to adequate safe drinking water throughout the year.

The World Bank estimates that 21 percent of communicable diseases in India are water related. Of these water-borne diseases alone, diarrhoea, killed over 700,000 Indians in 1999 -- nearly 1,923 deaths every day.

Children under the age of five are the most vulnerable to dying from drinking unclean water, the bank said.●