Valuing Health Loss in Karachi City from Water Contamination and Household Defensive Behavior

Abstract

Clean water is essential for healthy living and the use of contaminated water is a major source of global and regional burden of disease and mortality in less developed countries. This study identifies the extent of water contamination through standardized laboratory tests from the metropolitan city of Karachi, which is the largest city of Pakistan. Moreover, a household survey data is used to estimate a health production function focusing on waterborne diseases. The study finds the average probability of waterborne diseases and estimates the cost of illness from the sample data. Probability of illness and defensive behavior are proxied by the prevalence of diarrhea and household expenditures on water treatment, respectively. The results show that the likelihood of getting diarrhea is higher among households who make less expenditures on water treatment. Water contamination positively affects and filtration negatively affects the prevalence of diarrhea in the city. Further, the study finds that the total direct monthly health cost of untreated water consumption for the entire population of Karachi is PKR 80.7 million.