Alaska study links bad plumbing, disease

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A study finds that in Alaskan villages with no piped water or sewers the pneumonia rate among infants is 11 times the national average.

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Centers for Disease Control examined 49 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska, with a total of 2,000 homes. Researchers found that 24 percent of the infants had been hospitalized with pneumonia.

Tom Hennessey of the CDC's Arctic Investigations Program, one of the authors, said that the team also compared disease rates in low-service areas of the state, where 80 percent of the homes lack water and wastewater service, with those in high-service parts of the state. He said that the infection rates for pneumonia and flu were three times as high in the low-service areas and skin infection rates were twice as high.

President Bush's proposed budget cuts funding for the Village Safe Water Program, which has increased the percentage of villages with modern plumbing from about half to 75 percent.