Church in Pakistan helping to curb water-borne diseases

(Oct. 04, 2011) The Church in Pakistan is lending a helping hand to curb water borne diseases.
In one of the country’s largest catholic villages it has established a water filtration facility to curb water-borne diseases. Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad presided over the blessing of the St. Camillus Clean Drinking Water Center in Khushpur, in Punjab Province, home to seven thousand Catholics. Camillian Brother Mushtaq Anjum joined two priests, nuns and villagers at the inauguration of the facility last Sunday (October 2) in the compound of St Fidelis Church.
Bishop Coutts thanked the congregation for the invaluable resource center. “It is an expensive piece of machinery, and now it is your responsibility to take care of it,” he told the villagers.
The filtration plant cost 2.2 million rupees more than US$25,000. The Camillians will oversee changing water filters for the first year, after which, the community is to manage the plant itself. The project is an extension of the Camillians’ relief efforts after heavy flooding ravaged the country last year. The congregation constructed 53 houses, organized 13 medical camps. in which 2,200 patients were treated, and provided warm clothes and bedding to 300 flood victims last winter in three dioceses.
Brother Anjum who represents the Camillian Task Force, an international relief effort of the Order of Saint Camillus, said he is hopeful the clean water center would help improve health conditions in the flood-affected village.