The SBI studies the possibility of subsidize people with hypertension who have financial difficulties to pay for bottled waterafter increase the values of chlorides and sodium in the water for the drought that the country suffers.
The vice president of the state entity, Susana Montaner, explained in an interview with the program Doble Click (Del Sol) that the company analyzes “subsidize those who cannot afford” water and have hypertension problems while the supply lasts with the altered values, an issue that They will discuss this Monday in directive.
The Ministry of Public Health (MSP) recommended to “consume bottled water” to those people who suffer from hypertension due to the increase in chlorides and sodium in the water.
Montaner’s idea is that a “treating doctor” analyzes the situation of each patient and “arranges” if they need to drink bottled water. He could not detail, instead, how this information would reach OSE and how the subsidy would be paidsomething that will also be discussed at the meeting on Monday.
“We have to verify, there are many people who can stop buying a Coca Cola and buy a water”said the hierarch.
Regarding the MSP statement, Montaner understands that the portfolio “was covered” with the recommendation to hypertensives, and affirmed that the increase in the values of chlorides and sodium “It has more to do with the sensory”. “In the United States, these values are not even measured”he added.
“Rainfalls came little”
Montaner assured that the country is under a “very big water crisis”which led OSE to apply the “emergency system” of the change in water values.
The vice president regretted that in the Paso Severino basin, one of those that supplies Montevideo, currently there is a reserve of 9 million cubic meters of waternumber less than 65 million cubic meters that are normally in that sourceand warned that the water levels They continue to “decrease steadily.”
He also pointed out that the “rainfalls from Inumet (Uruguayan Institute of Meteorology) came little”, and “some did not arrive”. “Inumet You cannot give us more than 15 days for when the rains come, and when they have communicated rains they have not come as such”he emphasized.
According to Montaner, if water is not pumped under the Santa Lucía river as it is at present, from OSE it could not “supply the metropolitan system”which nourishes the “60% of Uruguayans”. “We could not flush the cistern“or perform” the home sanitization“, remarked the hierarch, who expressed that OSE he had no knowledge that he was going to “get to this crisis.”
Asked about a possible date for the end of this situation, the vice president said: “I can’t guess. Nature is unruly.”
