"Clean Drinking Water - Its Relation to Health and Medlcine"

by

Dr. Yasutaka Ogawa

Assistant Professor

Department of Public Health and Environmental Medicine

The Jikei University School of Medicine

ChairmanHon. Dr. Apenisa N. Kurisaqila (FIJI)

Dr. Apcnisa, thank you very much for your kind introduction. And honorable Memb ers of Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like first to say that it is i ndeed a great honor for mc to rcport the results of my research at this confere nce. Also I would like to thank the Hyogo Prefecture, Kobe City, and Mr. Maeda for providing me with this very valu-able opportunity. So I would now like to b egin my presentation.

I will bc talking mainly on the three topics. First, I shall talk about water a nd health, and review the relationship between the two from macroscopic statist ics. Second, I would like to focus on three countrles, and I would be specifica lly citing those countries' situation latcr, and I belleve that these three cou ntries are representative. And third, I would like to ttllk about water and ind ustrialization.

In 1996, the World Population Whlte Paper produced the data by countries which is also included In your handout. Please refer to the graph in your handout (se e Flgure 1). For the abcissa we have taken the clean water utilization rate and for thc ordinate we took the infant mortality rate. Then you can see a very be autiful negative correlatlon between the clean water utilization and the infant mortality rate, starting from Laos and Myanmar and all thc way to Japan and Si ngaporc. You can see that they form a straight line.