Thailand: Bangkok's klongs (canals) are full of sewage, a Bangkok city official reportedly admitted as a popular singer still fought for his life after catching an infection when his car crashed into one of the murky klongs of Bangkok.

Khun Pornpot Kannasoot, director of the BMA, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's water quality management said that most of the khlongs are used widely for transport and even swimming and all of them were seriously polluted.

Tests showed the Thai klongs, contained high levels of total coliforms, a bacteria that indicates the water is contaminated. Ideally, no total coliforms should be present in natural waterways, Khun Pornpot said. The major source of total coliforms is sewage and especially excrement.

Khun Pornpot said many of Thailand's households released excrement directly into the Bangkok khlongs. The BMA was able to treat one million cubic metres of waste water a day, currently more than 1.8 million cubic metres have to be dumped.

Thailand popstar Apichet Kittikorncharoen, a singer with boy band D2B and better known by his nickname "Big", has reportedly been given a 50-50 chance of surviving the brain infection he contracted when his car crashed into a water-filled ditch in Bangkok on July 22.

Hundreds of Thai fans have been keeping a vigil at the hospital in Bangkok where he is lying in a coma, folding paper cranes as a good-luck charm while they await the latest news bulletinsfrom the doctors.