ISLAMABAD - Six people died in the Pakistani city of Lahore and about 500 were sick after drinking water that was contaminated by sewage believed to have seeped into the city's supply lines, an official said on Thursday.
The sewage is thought to have contaminated the water supply in a poor, densely populated part of Lahore, the country's second city and capital of Punjab province.
"We think it was because of cross-contamination between sewage and water," the province's health minister, Tahir Ali Javed, told Reuters.
"We can confirm six people died because of gastroenteritis ... We've seen about 500 patients up to yesterday."
Eight emergency clinics had been set up in the neighbourhood and 200 beds at a nearby hospital set aside for the sick, he said.
Water was being trucked into the neighbourhood in tankers and authorities had ordered the replacement of old water pipes, he said.
A majority of Pakistan's 150 million people do not have access to safe drinking water and this week President Pervez Musharraf announced a target of potable water for all within three years.
More water purification plants should be built as part of the drive, he was reported as saying.
About a dozen people died in Hyderabad city in the south of the country last year after drinking contaminated water.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
