Sections:
World Water Day 2008
20 March 2008
Saturday 22 March is
World
Water Day. 2008 is also the
International
Year of Sanitation.
Both events seek to highlight the plight of over a billion people in developing countries who live in disease and squalor because they lack a reliable and safe water supply, or don't have access to even basic sanitation.
Two-fifths of the world's population have no toilet to use, and 5,000 children die every day because of dirty water and poor sanitation.
Earlier this week, International Development Minister Gareth Thomas pledged over £8 million to tackle the growing threat of conflict over scarce water resources. The money will go towards a series of initiatives to promote water sharing, including a fund to help some of the 130 million people living within the Nile Basin.
The Minister also announced £1.5 million to help communities in developing countries build more toilets and understand why better hygiene improves their health.
DFID now provides £95 million a year for water and sanitation in Africa, and will double this to £200 million a year by 2011. Read the case studies below to find out more about what DFID is doing to tackle a crisis which claims the life of a child every 15 seconds:
- Water flows for Asma'u in Nigeria - Asma'u used to have to pay street sellers for dirty water from the local river, because pumped supplies were so unreliable. Now, thanks in part to DFID, clean water is flowing straight to her house ... More
- More toilets, more girls in school in Malawi - M’buka Primary was bursting at the seams after school fees were abolished. Many more kids were getting an education, but facilities were badly over-stretched. Shockingly, the school had no toilets for its 3,000 pupils. A DFID/UNICEF project came up with a practical solution ... More
And get the answers to 15 key questions on DFID and water and sanitation in our new Q and A.
Also, learn about the work we are carrying out in three developing countries to improve access to water and sanitation:
- Water and sanitation in China
(310 kb)
- Making water, sanitation and hygiene work in Ethiopia (opens as a fold-up leaflet)
- Water, sanitation and hygiene in India - responding to the challenges (opens as a fold-up leaflet)
