UNICEF says the hours women and girls spend every day collecting water is a colossal waste of their valuable time.
A statement by UNICEF and copied to the Ghana News Agency said as World Water Week is underway in Stockholm and experts gather to try to improve the world’s access to water, the UN children’s agency stressed that the opportunity cost of lack of access to water disproportionately falls on women.
It said the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for water and sanitation, Goal 6, calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030.
It said the first step is providing everyone with a basic service within a 30-minute round trip, and the long term goal is to ensure everyone has safe water available at home.
However, in sub-Saharan Africa, one roundtrip to collect water is still 33 minutes on average in rural areas and 25 minutes in urban areas and the burden of fetching it falls disproportionately on women and children.
“Collection of water can also affect the health of the whole family and particularly of children”
“When water is transported and stored, it increases the risk that it is faecally contaminated.”
It said this in turn increases the risk of diarrhoeal disease, which is a leading cause of chronic malnutrition or stunting and the fourth cause of death among children under five with 300,000 deaths per year due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene or unsafe drinking water.
The statement said in Ghana, the Millennium Development Goal target for access to improved water supplies was achieved, however less than two in every five Ghanaian is drinking safe water, and one in every six households does not have a basic water supply within a 30-minute round trip.
It said these challenges are likely to contribute to the annual more than 3,600 Ghanaian children each year from diarrhoea and the cholera outbreaks in Ghana that impact on tens of thousands of Ghanaians.
"Achieving the SDG goal 6 will reduce diarrhoea and cholera impacts, as well as reducing the burden on women and children who are responsible for collecting water in four every five households,” it said
UNICEF promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child, in everything we do. Together with our partners, we work in 190 countries and territories to translate that commitment into practical action, focusing special effort on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded children, to the benefit of all children, everywhere.
For more information about UNICEF and its work one should visit: www.unicef.org.
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