Water,+Sanitation+&+Hygiene

=Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)= []



Background Information 1
The conceptual gap between turning on a kitchen water faucet and walking four kilometers to fetch and lug water back home is almost too large for most adults to grasp, much less for schoolchildren. The same can be said about a household bathroom versus a distant communal latrine shared by several families. Furthermore, the notion of not having access to a toilet or a hand-washing facility at school or work is removed from many lives in the United States. Yet nearly 2.5 billion people 2 do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. It is a bleak reality.

UNICEF Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programs are active in over 90 of the more than 150 countries in which UNICEF works; helping to improve access to water and sanitation as well as improving critical hygiene behaviors such as hand washing with soap. In countries such as the U.S., where water is treated, piped into homes, and then carried off by efficient sewage systems, the availability of clean water, proper hygiene, and sanitation is mostly taken for granted. In areas where human waste is not carried off by sewage systems, or safely disposed of in pit latrines or other sanitation facilities, proper hygiene awareness becomes critical. UNICEF WASH programs attempt to raise awareness of these issues. Currently, UNICEF monitors nations according to whether they have “improved” or “unimproved” access to water and sanitation. Improved access includes countries with water sources such as protected wells, harvested rainwater, and public standpipes, and sanitation facilities such as septic tanks and pit latrines. Currently, almost fifty percent of the developing world’s population – 2.5 billion people – lack improved sanitation facilities, and over 884 million people still use unsafe drinking water sources. 3  The number of individuals without these basic services is expected to continue to grow. What is considered a dangerous situation could escalate into a global crisis as water shortages begin to appear in industrialized nations as a result of global warming, lack of conservation measures, and increased contamination of the world’s water supply. Although water covers over 70 percent of the earth’s surface, just a fraction of it is useable, the ocean holds 97 percent, the remaining 3 percent is fresh water that is found hidden in underground aquifers, frozen in glaciers or in rivers and lakes. 4

Water and Children, Sanitation and Survival

The effects of not having access to clean water and adequate sanitation facilities go far beyond convenience and aesthetics. Lack of safe water and sanitation is the world’s single largest cause of illnesses, and the second highest cause of preventable childhood deaths with about 4,100 children 5 dying daily from waterborne illnesses. The lack of adequate sanitation facilities is just as deadly — 1 gram of feces can contain viruses, bacteria, parasite cysts, and parasite eggs. Water and sanitation-related illnesses include diarrhea, which kills nearly 2.2 million children, mostly under 5 each year; malaria, a disease exacerbated by poor drainage and uncovered water; and trachoma, a disease caused by the lack of water combined with poor hygiene practices has blinded millions of people, studies have found that access to an adequate water supply could reduce trachoma by 25%. 6 In addition, hand washing with soap is linked to dramatic reductions in the incidence of respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia — the number one cause of child mortality globally.

For those living without access to a safe water supply, finding and carrying water can become a chore that eclipses all others and a burden that might determine a child’s future. Women and children, especially girls, are most often the family water collectors. Fetching water can mean walking to a water source many miles away or waiting for hours in water lines. In about 90 countries around the world including Nicaragua, Iraq, Sudan, Colombia, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan — many girls miss school because they have to collect water or stay home to care for family members sickened by water-based illnesses, which is often caused by contaminants such as parasites. Of the children who do attend school, many are faced with the same challenges there. Lack of clean water for drinking and hand washing and the absence of private and adequate toilets compromises children’s ability to learn and often causes them to leave school altogether. Girls are especially vulnerable to this; many drop out once they reach puberty due to the lack of private and safe sanitation facilities. In short, children stay in school longer, perform better, and are less susceptible to decreased mental and physical development when they have access to improved water and sanitation.

The UN and UNICEF: Responding to the Need

In September 2000, the UN crafted a set of eight goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), that affirmed the world’s “shared duty” to all people, especially children and the poor. These goals include aims such as halving extreme poverty, stemming the spread of HIV/AIDS, and providing universal primary education. The MDGs have brought together nonprofit organizations, governments, research and policy institutions, and advocacy groups on a global level in an effort to improve the living, learning, and working conditions of the world’s most vulnerable. All of the MDGs are interlinked. For example, although goal #7 speaks specifically to environmental issues, it is recognized that providing water and sanitation is crucial for the success of all the MDGs. Without ensuring safe water, sanitation, and hygiene education for all, it will be impossible to meet the other goals.

UNICEF has used the MDGs, among other goals set by other international organizations, to guide its work in water and sanitation. UNICEF began its first water and sanitation program in India in 1966 and has since worked in numerous developing countries on this issue, with WASH programs that help to provide clean water, latrines, and hygiene education to children and their communities. UNICEF’s strategy revolves around four elements: creating child-friendly facilities, providing training in hygiene education for teachers and children, offering outreach to communities, and contributing to policy work for the development of sustainable models.

Thanks to the work of national governments, communities, and international partners such as UNICEF, the world is currently on track to halve the number of people without access to a safe water supply by 2015. The work to provide sanitation, on the other hand, is much further behind, though, and in recognition of this need to escalate efforts globally, 2008 was designated the International Year of Sanitation (IYS) 7.

The IYS has five key messages:
 * 1) Sanitation is vital for health.
 * 2) Sanitation is social development.
 * 3) Sanitation is a good economic investment.
 * 4) Sanitation is good for the environment.
 * 5) Sanitation is achievable.

“We Are All Downstream”: Water Connects Us
It is impossible to overstate the impact of water and sanitation in our lives. Far from being a source merely for drinking and bathing, water is needed by all types of industries: agriculture, power production, household use, ore and mineral extraction, livestock husbandry, and other commercial uses. The amount of water used in everyday products is vastly larger than most people realize. It takes 1000 to 3000 liters of water to produce a kilogram of rice and 13,000 to 15,000 liters to produce a kilogram of grain-fed beef 8.

We all draw water from the same global “well,” and we need increasingly more of it with increased demand from agriculture, industry, and municipal use. Instead of having access to more, however, we are faced with the prospect of making do with less as pressure on our water sources intensifies. In the U.S., the impact is that we are becoming more conservative in water usage patterns and regulating more stringently industry and effluent standards. In developing countries, however, this situation is decidedly more acute because the “common well” is often used for multiple purposes ranging from bathing to cooking, to running small businesses. Water sources are often untreated and unregulated—leading to precarious levels of pollution that threaten public health and safety. For this reason, a heightened priority is placed on basic hygiene and sanitation in developing countries (while more structural changes in water treatment and regulation can be put in place), while “more developed” countries are at the stage of regulating consumption patterns and industrial effluents. The world’s freshwater resources are becoming increasingly contaminated by pesticides, industrial runoff, and human waste. Global warming is wreaking havoc on weather patterns, leading to droughts, floods, and other extreme climatic changes that can affect water supplies. Communal water sources such as glaciers are melting, decreasing the amount of runoff that fills rivers and lakes, and, additionally, more precipitation is coming as rain rather than as snow, leaving snow packs insufficient to supply reservoirs during the summer months. Around the world, countries are dealing with water scarcity in various ways: rationing/ regulation (U.S.), wastewater reuse (global but largely in the Middle East and North Africa), water recycling (France), and ecosanitation (a way of recuperating the nutrients in wastewater and returning them to productive uses), among others.

The connections between domestic consumption, use of water and sanitation, and global water management, though deeply evident to many, remains an abstract notion to most of us in the United States. Because most of our water supply is clean, cheap, and easily accessible, we believe it to be limitless. For some, however, the fragility of our own water system is becoming painfully evident. In 2007, Georgia officials warned that Lake Lanier, a reservoir in northern Georgia that supplies over 3 million residents with water, was on the verge of depletion, with smaller regional reservoirs in even worse condition. 9 Water rationing is a reality in many places in the West and South, and it will become increasingly common throughout the United States. Likely we will look to new and innovative ways of managing our resources more responsibly in the future, borrowing from the examples of countries that are already managing scarce water resources. We are all connected to this finite resource, and we must connect ourselves to those who struggle for it so that we can work to find long-lasting, global solutions.

1 Statistics were updated in 2010. For the most up-to-date statistics and information, please visit: 2 Source: [] 3 Source: [] 4 Source: [] 5 Source: [] 6 Source: [] 7 Source: [] 8 Source: [] 9 Source: []
 * [|http://www.childinfo.org]
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 * [|http://www.unwater.org]