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“In 2010, the UN General Assembly explicitly recognised the human right to water and sanitation. Everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use. And yet, 663 million people rely on unimproved sources, including 159 million dependent on surface water. Globally, at least 1.8 billion people use a drinking-water source contaminated with faeces. Contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio.”
According to the WHO, “some 842 000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene. But diarrhoea is largely preventable, and the deaths of 361 000 children aged under 5 could be avoided each year if these risk factors were addressed. Where water is not readily available, people may decide handwashing is not a priority, thereby adding to the likelihood of diarrhoea and other diseases.”
The communities we support count among those dependent on unsafe surface water. Having no well, they have to collect their water from a dam, which is the same place the wild animals come to drink. In the dry season, they don’t even have that, and have to buy water from other areas which is very expensive.
We teach people about the importance of personal hygiene to prevent disease, but it is very difficult where water is so hard to come by and its use prioritised for drinking and watering crops.
Consequently, we are hoping to raise the funds to have two boreholes drilled to supply sufficient clean water for our community’s hydration, sanitation and irrigation needs. Our initial research indicates that this could cost close to $10,000 US for each borehole, including surveys, drilling, piping and pumps.
Such a large sum of money is very difficult to raise, but we pray that we will find a way to make this happen.
