Addis Abeba — The society is urged to utilize a household water treatment tablet to prevent the outbreak of acute diarrhea in all parts of the country including Addis Ababa.

Citrus International PLC made available a household water treatment tablet called Aquatabs to alleviate water borne diseases that result from lack of safe drinking water.

Aquatabs enable areas without access to water disinfection systems to benefit from chlorination without any infrastructure requirements proving to be a speedy and cost-effective strategy, said Menassie Kifle, General Manager, Citrus PLC Ethiopia on Thursday at the Intercontinental Hotel press conference here. On the occasion it was also disclosed that the registration of the tablet by Drug Administration and Control Authority (DACA) has been confirmed. The registration process for Aquatabs was finalized by DACA after looking into the relevant documents and evaluation of the tablet.

The tablet gives an alternative for household treatment and has already been in use by 20 European and North American countries for the last twenty years, he added.

Citrus PLC is supplier of Aquatabs and is also working with different NGOs. This kind of water purification tablet is a useful tool to increase the percentage of clean water access, which currently stands only at 53 percent.

Aquatabs have been usually used by aid agencies, NGOs, defense forces and others.

"It could be sold at supermarket and local shops, in addition to the regular pharmaceutical outlets. This is believed to create opportunity for every household to have an easy access to the product" Minassie added.

According to the joint FAO/WHO expert committee on Food Additives, it has approved Aquatabs for drinking and for the purposes of cleaning at household level.

Some studies indicate that central to the spread of acute water caused diarrhea is the lack of clean drinking water, often contaminated by sewage. Over 1.1 billion people in the world are still without access to improved drinking water sources. The global burden of disease places diarrhea as the third highest cause of morbidity and sixth highest cause of mortality.