Small Intervention makes Prevention on Health Hazards

Gadapani (LEK) community of Pancheswor VDC ward no 2 is located in the western part of the Baitadi district. It is 35 miles far from the district headquarter. GPS location of the community is 290 21.632N, 80019.962E. The trend to move India for the employment in seasonal basis is the main way of sustaining the livelihood of those community members.

The community member used to open watershed from long period as the purpose of drinking, irrigation and funeral ceremony and cattle also directly reach to drink water in source. This may lead to increase water impurity which causes children and old in severely affected from Diarrhoea, viral fever and water causes health problems. “We never thought Diarrhoea and viral fevers were affected us by the cause of open and unmanaged water sources, we were not aware of those issues before the PAHAL intervention, said Mr. Krishna Singh Ghatal, (Chairperson of the water source protection committee)

The PAHAL program mapping of water shed for the protection was done of the Pancheswor VDC on 20th May 2017. Then, NRM component went to observe the water shed on 17th September 2017. The status of the watershed was in miserable condition. Sanitation was not good there community members were carrying water from the same water shed and the animals of 40 households, were also drinking this water from the same source. During the time community members were called and they were oriented on the safe use of water and its management along with formation of working committee for source protection.

The working committee lead community member and done fence with stones around the main source of water, which blocks the cattle entrance to the sources and source was cleaned. Now day’s community members are taking clean water than before.
Till date 95 households of 500 members are directly benefited from the source with clean water. According to Vice chairperson of the watershed management working committee Mrs. Kamala Devi Ghatal, 26 years old told “Our community members used to water from the unmanaged watershed, we were not aware of its negative impacts but we were shocked during the orientation given by PAHAL then we were motivated to fence around the source, now we are using the clean water”.