But unofficial reports say several hundreds have already died, and the number of people afflicted run into the thousands. The problem has been compounded by the sinking of tubewells, in an effort to provide safe drinking water nBangladesh's villages. The wells go deep into the ground, and nearly all of them in the 41 districts are contaminated. Arsenic is a well-known poison, which in water affects human metabolism more slowly, appearing on the body as scabies, sores and gangrene. It cuts the life span of those affected, causing intense pain and nausea followed by convulsions and coma.
Health professionals say the only possible solution is that people stop drinking tubewell water.
But that would increase cases of diarrhoea, dysentery and other water-borne diseases because most surface sources of water in Bangladesh are polluted. In fact, Bangladesh has received world-wide acclaim for providing safe water to more than 80 percent of its people with a tubewell within a 100 metres of every family. But arsenic in ground water has emerged as a serious problem across the country and also in the neighbouring state of West Bengal, in India, and in inner Mongolia. It was first detected in India. A senior official of the Public Health Engineering Directorate, who preferred to remain unidentified, blamed the scourge on the over exploitation of ground water for irrigation and other purposes.