Today, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services and 4.2 billion people lack safely managed sanitation services. Unsafe hygiene practices are widespread, compounding the effects on people’s health. The impact on child mortality rates is devastating with more than 297 000 children under five who die annually from diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene, or unsafe drinking water.
Safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are fundamental to improving standards of living for people. The improved standards made possible by WASH include, among others, better physical health, protection of the environment, better educational outcomes, convenience time savings, assurance of lives lived with dignity, and equal treatment for both men and women. Poor and vulnerable populations have lower access to improved WASH services and have poorer associated behaviors. Improved WASH is therefore central to reducing poverty, promoting equality, and supporting socioeconomic development. Drinking water and sanitation were targets in the Millennium
Water
A person without access to improved drinking water – for example from a protected borehole well or municipal piped supply for instance – is forced to rely on sources such as surface water, unprotected and possibly contaminated wells, or vendors selling water of unverifiable provenance and quality.
For many communities, water sources are usually far from their homes, and it typically falls to women and girls to spend much of their time and energy fetching water, a task which often exposes them to attack from men and even wild animals.
Sanitation
Without improved sanitation – a facility that safely separates human waste from human contact – people have no choice but to use inadequate communal latrines or to practice open defecation. For women and girls, finding a place to go to the toilet outside, often having to wait until the cover of darkness, can leave them vulnerable to abuse and sexual assault.
In the immediate environment, exposed faecal matter will be transferred back into people’s food and water resources, helping to spread serious diseases such as cholera. Beyond the community, the lack of effective waste disposal or sewerage systems can contaminate ecosystems and contribute to disease pandemics.
Hygiene
In some parts of the world there is little or no awareness of good hygiene practices and their role in reducing the spread of disease. However, it is often the case that even when people do have knowledge of good hygiene behavior, they lack the soap, safe water and washing facilities they need to make positive changes to protect themselves and their community.
Improved water supply and sanitation provide individuals with increased comfort, safety, dignity, status, and convenience, and also have broader effects on the living environment. The social welfare effects are difficult to quantify, given their subjective nature. Nevertheless, those benefits are consistently cited as among the most important for beneficiaries of water supply and sanitation and may be particularly relevant for women.
Eduindex News 