It is a tendency, somewhat dogmatic, to indicate without any foundation that the country’s water conflicts have their origin mainly in the orientation of the current management model of health services, without considering that the more than 13 years of drought, with a water reduction close to 40%, are due to multiple factors that converge in climate change (decrease in rainfall, high temperatures, very short winters, among others) and, why not say it, the intervention of third parties in natural channels.
There are other factors that are very little mentioned regarding the water scarcity that plagues our country, such as the increase in the demand for water with the same, even reduced, supply. Thus, thanks to the robustness of the health infrastructure and the operational continuity and resilience plans, in conjunction with a public-private work, that the inhabitants of our country, who are supplied by health companies, very little perceive the lower availability of water that prevails.
According to the latest management report of the health sector (2020), prepared by the Superintendence of Sanitary Services, the provision of drinking water, that is, the daily consumption of drinking water per inhabitant, averages 161.1 liters. This is 37.9% higher than the daily consumption per inhabitant of OECD countries.
In the sixties, the country registered a deficient coverage of drinking water (53.5%) and sewerage (25%), with a large number of public entities providing urban service. From the 70s, the priority given to health investments as one of the axes of public health policy, detonated the beginning of the transformations that would follow in the sector.
Due to regulatory changes in the 90s, private actors began to enter the health sector that, among others and thanks to the investments made, always supervised by the State, began to leave behind news that were very recurrent at the time: Typhus, Cholera and Hepatitis.
We only have to remember the first months of 1992 when the first cases of inhabitants of the Metropolitan Region infected with Cholera began to appear (it is worth saying that in 1886 Cholera killed more than 30 thousand people in our country). However, thanks to the already extensive coverage of drinking water, the outbreak was smaller.
Water is a national good that belongs to all Chileans and health service providers operate drinking water and sewerage systems governed by the strictest rules that the authority imposes on them. This has allowed us not only to have a continuous supply free of pathogens, but also a coverage comparable to that of countries such as Singapore, Switzerland, Portugal, France, the United Kingdom and Spain.
Likewise, when comparing the rates of large cities, with respect to those paid by customers in Greater Santiago, they appear within the group of the smallest, even at a lower cost than those existing in Germany, Canada, Finland, the United States, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica or Mexico.
Nationalizing health services would generate a harmful setback for all that joint work that could put at risk the multiple emergencies that the State must attend to today and could also mean losing the status achieved by the Chilean health sector that today maintains the highest indicators in Latin America, with a concessioned urban coverage of 99.9% in drinking water, 97.3% in sewerage and 99.9% in wastewater treatment on the population connected to the sewerage system, leading the ranking of OECD countries.
We believe that the regulatory framework should be updated in view of current and future challenges, but that is not related to disarming the model of public-private participation, but on the contrary, it must be strengthened by improving regulation.
Let us not erase with our elbow what has been successfully realized and improved in recent decades and, even more, what is a matter of admiration worldwide.
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
