CLEAN WATER FOR UGANDANS

From Joint Monitoring Program of the UNICEF/World Health Organization.  Africa stands out as the continent most lacking in improved water for its people.

Safe water for drinking and cooking - vital for human life - is a critical problem in the developing world. The map above shows that fact - the lighter the color the greater the fraction of the country's population without safe water that is easily accessible. ( Easily accessible according to the World Health Organization means within 1 KM, 6/10 of a mile. One may still have to walk to get water by up to 20 minutes – each way.) Africa clearly is the continent most at risk and Uganda, close to the center of Africa, shares that fate.

Throughout Uganda, many people carry water in large plastic jugs, often for long distances.  In my neighborhood I observe each day children and women filling those jugs from a source of water that does not appear secure and safe.  And every westerner who comes to Africa is told, “don’t drink the water – unless it is first boiled or is commercially bottled water”.

The organization where I am volunteering, the National Association of Professional Environmentalists, just completed a study about the supply of clean water in Uganda.  They found that:

·       Uganda has an abundant supply of fresh water

·       over nine and a half million (9,500,000) Ugandans of a population of thirty-four million (34,000,000) do not have “improved water”, - clean and safe water that is easily accessible;

·       Uganda has made progress toward its Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the number of its citizens without “improved water” by 2015.  However, recent figures show a reduction in the fraction of the population with improved water from 67% to 65%.

While Uganda and other countries have, with the assistance of development partners, made significant progress over the past two decades, much more needs to be done to carry out the 2010 statement of the United Nations Human Rights Council:

 “The human right to safe water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health as well as the right to life and human dignity” 

The pictures below will document the problems faced by many Ugandans to get clean, safe water to drink:

Borehole that serves Kangugo Village, Luwero, Uganda

Children getting water from the borehole.

 Children and women gather water from a water source in Nakawa-Kinawataka District, Kampala.

The same water source from another angle.