The Belize Need for Clean Water

Access to safe water is limited. While most villages have a Water Board in place and some already have a water tower. The water is collected rain or river water with a little bleach added to it. Most of the villagers buy bottled water if they have the resources, while others will boil it. This will not remove the dirt, bacteria, parasites and deadly E-coli from the water supply.

The risk of major infectious diseases, such as bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, dengue fever, malaria and leptospirosis is high. The region is also prone to frequent, devastating hurricanes from June to November, and coastal flooding especially in the south. Even a typical thunderstorm will produce enough flooding to cause outside latrines to over flow causing even more disease to flow into their water source.