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Russian Federation: Safe water saves lives

30-10-1997 News Release 97/43

A pumping station has gone into service to improve the water supply to the city of Khasavyurt, in Daghestan. The station will provide some 12,000 cubic meters of drinking water daily to Khasavyurt's supply network.

Following the influx of some 20,000 people displaced by the fighting in Chechnya, the ICRC undertook a vast project in early 1996 to increase the quantity and quality of the water available to the city's 85,000 inhabitants, who for years had suffered endemic cholera and sporadic outbreaks of typhoid fever and dysentery, and now risked further epidemics of water-borne disease. The ICRC began rebuilding the pumping station, which had long been out of service, and repairing damaged sections of the 22-km stretch of pipe that connected it to the city. A holding tank was also repaired and a chlorination station equipped with automatic chlorinators to disinfect the water before it is pumped into the distribution network. A high-tension line and transformer were installed to ensure an adequate electricity supply. The entire programme cost 180,000 US dollars.