Department of Agricultural Civil Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea; Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, University of Ilorin, PMB 1515, Ilorin, Nigeria.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Technology, PMB 704, Akure, Nigeria; Key Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology, Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, PR China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, PR China.
Environ Res. 2021 Jan;192:110309. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.110309. Epub 2020 Oct 10.
Water is an essential resource required for various human activities such as drinking, cooking, and other recreational activities. While developed nations have made significant improvement in providing adequate quality water and sanitation devoid of virus contaminations to a significant percentage of the residences, many of the developing countries are still lacking in these regards, leading to many death cases among the vulnerable due to ingestion of virus-contaminated water and other waterborne pathogens. However, the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 seems to have changed the paradigm by reawakening the importance of water quality and sanitation, and focusing more attention on the pervasive effect of the use of virus-contaminated water as it can be a potential driver for the spread of the virus and other waterborne diseases, especially in developing nations that are characterized by low socioeconomic development. Therefore, this review assessed the socioeconomic inequalities related to the usage of virus-contaminated water and other waterborne pathogens in developing countries. The socioeconomic factors attributed to the various waterborne diseases due to the use of virus-contaminated water in many developing countries are poverty, the standard of living, access to health care facilities, age, gender, and level of education. Some mitigation strategies to address the viral contamination of water sources are therefore proposed, while future scope and recommendations on tackling the essential issues related to socioeconomic inequality in developing nations are highlighted.
水是人类各种活动所必需的资源，例如饮用水、烹饪和其他娱乐活动。虽然发达国家在为相当大比例的居民提供充足质量的水和无病毒污染的卫生设施方面取得了重大进展，但许多发展中国家在这方面仍然存在不足，导致由于摄入受病毒污染的水和其他水传播病原体，脆弱人群中出现了许多死亡病例。然而，最近的全球 COVID-19 大流行似乎改变了这一模式，重新强调了水质和卫生的重要性，并更加关注使用受病毒污染的水的普遍影响，因为它可能是病毒和其他水传播疾病传播的潜在驱动因素，特别是在以社会经济发展水平低为特征的发展中国家。因此，本综述评估了与发展中国家使用受病毒污染的水和其他水传播病原体相关的社会经济不平等。由于许多发展中国家使用受病毒污染的水而导致的各种水传播疾病的社会经济因素包括贫困、生活水平、获得医疗保健设施的机会、年龄、性别和教育水平。因此，提出了一些减轻策略来解决水源的病毒污染问题，同时强调了处理发展中国家与社会经济不平等相关的基本问题的未来范围和建议。
