The Ministry of Health is currently investigating rumours that have been circulating on social media of contaminated water in Dominica.
At a press conference on Wednesday November 23rd, Chief Medical Officer, Dr. David Johnson, expressed that the Ministry is taking this matter seriously and would like to lay to rest any concerns that the general public might have in relation to death due to potable water in Dominica.
He revealed that currently the Ministry of Health has collaborated with the relevant international health authorities to investigate the source of the rumours.
He stated that this misinformation has caused unnecessary alarm in the general public.
Dr. Johnson outlined the guidelines that the Ministry follows to ensure safety of drinking and recreational water.
“We do such things as annual sanitary assessments of all the catchments and intakes of water in Dominica; we do weekly field-test for chlorine residue in selected systems and we also do what we refer to as fortnightly bacteriological analysis of samples for each water system. We take specimen and we refer some of this to other public health labs [such as] the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to do further analysis for us.
He says the Ministry of Health has no concern as it relates to the quality of drinking water in Dominica.