Emergencies, the three deadly threats for the poorest children: climate risks and contaminated water, poor access to sanitation

ROME – Sanitation-related diseases debilitate and kill one million Africans every year. People suffering from poor sanitation occupy half of the hospital beds in Sub-Saharan Africa and absorb 12% of the budget. So as leaders prepare for historic United Nations Conference on Water on March 22, UNICEF calls for urgent investment to protect children water emergency: lack of safe water, inadequate sanitation and climate risks, according to a new analysis of theUNICEF.

The countries most at risk. The triple threat appears to be most serious in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia. In this way, West and Central Africa is one of the most insecure countries in terms of water and climate. Many of the worst-affected countries, particularly in the Sahel, are also facing economic instability and armed conflict, further exacerbating children’s difficulties in accessing clean water and sanitation.

The water catastrophe. Africa is facing a water disaster. As climate and water-related shocks are intensifying globally, nowhere else in the world are children so exposed to life-threatening dangers,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, director of UNICEF programs. Droughts are already contaminating water resources, creating food insecurity and spreading many diseases. But as difficult as current conditions are, without urgent action, the future could be even bleaker.

Unicef ​​analysis. The dossier of the United Nations children’s organization, conducted on a global scale, examined the access of families to water services, so-called “WASH”, the burden of deaths attributable to the poor quality of the same among children under five years and exposure to climatic and environmental risks. The result is a list of places where children face the greatest threat and where investment is absolutely necessary to find solutions and avoid deaths.

Lack of water, soap and toilets. In the countries listed above, nearly a third of children lack safe drinking water at home and two-thirds lack basic sanitation. A quarter of children have no choice but to practice defecation in the fresh air. Hand hygiene is also limited, with three-quarters of children unable to wash their hands due to a lack of soap and water at home.

diarrheal diseases. As a result, these countries also account for the highest number of childhood deaths from diseases caused by inadequate water resources, such as diarrheal diseases. For example, six out of ten children have faced cholera outbreaks in the past year. Globally, more than 1,000 children under five die every day from water-related diseases, and about two in five children live in the countries listed above.

Climate and environmental threats. These places also fall within the 25 percent of 163 countries globally with the highest risk of exposure to climate and environmental threats. Warmer temperatures, which accelerate the multiplication of pathogens, are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average in parts of West and Central Africa. Groundwater levels are also falling, forcing some communities to dig wells twice as deep as even just a decade ago. At the same time, rainfall has become more erratic but heavier, causing flooding that contaminates already scarce water supplies.

The OECD classification. Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia are also classified by theOECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) as fragile or extremely fragile, continuously threatened by armed conflicts which in some cases even threaten to reverse the progress made in guaranteeing clean water and sanitation.

Burkina Faso. This country has seen an increase in attacks on water facilities as a strategy to displace communities. Fifty-eight water points were attacked in 2022, compared to twenty-one in 2021 and three in 2020. As a result, more than 830,000 people, more than half of them children, lost access to clean water in the last year.

The United Nations Conference on Water. The new analysis anticipates the 2023 United Nations Water Conference to be held in New York from March 22-24. World leaders and international organizations will meet for the first time in forty-six years to review progress being made to ensure access to water and sanitation for all.

Unicef ​​requests for children. Unicef ​​calls for greater efforts to help the most vulnerable communities, increase investments in so-called climate resilience also by virtue of the funds allocated for the climate, in order to guarantee all the children of the world the possibility of having at least base and clean water. “The loss of a child’s life is devastating for families. But the pain is heightened when it is preventable and is caused by the lack of basic necessities that many take for granted, such as clean water, toilets and soap,” he concluded. Wijesekera.