KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

Poor quality drinking water and inadequate sanitation are among the world's major preventable causes of early mortality. According to World Health Organisation estimates, contaminated drinking water is responsible for some five million deaths each year. Risk of death is particularly high for children. A child dies every eight seconds from a preventable water or sanitation-related disease. The problem is not limited to developing countries. Even in OECD countries, waterborne outbreaks occur all too frequently, without necessarily being recognised as such. During the years 1991-98, there were 35 outbreaks of disease linked to drinking water in the United Kingdom and 113 in the United States. Yet despite the clear importance of drinking water as a cause of infectious disease, very little consideration has been-given to how best to investigate the relationship between the two. The need to achieve a better understanding of water's role in the transmission of infectious disease was officially acknowledged by the international community in 1996 at the OECD Workshop on Biotechnology for Water Use and Conservation in Cocoyoc, Mexico. Then, in 1998, the OECD Interlaken Workshop on Molecular Technologies for Safe Drinking Water reviewed the effectiveness of drinking water plants in preventing the passage of microbial contaminants and the reliability of current indicators as means to guarantee microbiologically safe water to consumers. Recommendations from that Workshop highlighted the need for better approaches and methods to assess the safety of drinking water and to monitor and respond to adverse events.